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Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:25:23 -0700 From: Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org> To: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org Cc: torvalds@...ux-foundation.org, akpm@...ux-foundation.org, x86@...nel.org, Andi Kleen <ak@...ux.intel.com> Subject: [PATCH 29/29] tsx: Add documentation for lock-elision From: Andi Kleen <ak@...ux.intel.com> Document the tunables and the statistics in Documentation/lock-elision.txt Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@...ux.intel.com> --- Documentation/lock-elision.txt | 94 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 files changed, 94 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) create mode 100644 Documentation/lock-elision.txt diff --git a/Documentation/lock-elision.txt b/Documentation/lock-elision.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc5a5ac --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/lock-elision.txt @@ -0,0 +1,94 @@ + +The Linux kernel uses Intel TSX lock elision for most of its locking primitives, +when the hardware supports TSX. + +This allows to run lock regions that follow specific conditions to run +in parallel without explicit blocking in a memory transaction. If the +transaction fails the code falls back to the normal lock. + +The lock elision is implemented using RTM. + +To measure transaction success the TSX perf extensions should be used. +(At the time of this writing this requires unmerged perf patches, +as in the full Haswell PMU patch series in hsw/pmu* in +git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ak/linux-misc.git) + +perf stat -T ... +perf record -e tx-aborts ... + +The elision code is mostly adaptive, that is the lock predicts whether +it should elide or not based on the history. + +There are various tunables available in /sys/module/rtm_locks/parameters. +The tunables are grouped by lock types. + +Elision can be enabled by lock types: + +rwsem_elision Enable elision for read-write semaphores +mutex_elision Enable elision for mutexes +spinlock_elision Enable elision for spinlocks +rwlock_elision Enable elision for read-write spinlocks +bitlock_elision Enable elision for bit spinlocks + +Some lock types use adaptive algorithms. The adaptive algorithm +has a number of tunables which can be tuned. Each tunable +is named LOCKTYPE_TUNABLE. For example to tune the conflict retries +for mutexes do + +echo NUMBER > /sys/module/rtm_locks/parameters/mutex_conflict_retry + +Valid adaptive lock types are: +mutex, readlock, writelock, readsem, writesem, spinlock + +The current tunables are (subject to change): + +In general increasing the skip counts makes lock elision more conservative, +while increasing retries or timeout makes it more aggressive. + +*_elision Global elision enable for the lock type. +*_conflict_abort_skip Number of elisions to skip when a transaction + failed due to a number of retried conflicts. +*_conflict_retry Number of retries on memory conflicts +*_internal_abort_skip Number of elision to skip when a transaction + failed due to a reason inside the transaction + (that is not caused by another CPU) +*_lock_busy_retry How often to retry wen the lock is busy on + elision. +*_lock_busy_skip How often to skip elision when retries on + lock busy failed. +*_other_abort_skip How often to skip elision when the transaction + failed for other reasons (e.g. capacity overflow) +*_retry_timeout How often to spin while waiting for a lock to free + before retrying + +Note these tunables do not present an ABI and may change as the internals +evolve. + +Additional statistics: + +lock_el_skip Number of times a lock didn't elide due to skipping +lock_el_skip_start Number of times a lock started skipping + +The average skip is lock_el_skip / lock_el_start_skip +Additional statistics can be gotten using perf PMU TSX events. + +There is also a elision:elision_skip_start trace point that triggers every time +a lock starts skipping elision due to non success. + +References: +"Adding Lock elision to Linux" +http://halobates.de/adding-lock-elision-to-linux.pdf + +"Adding lock elision to the GNU C Library" +http://lwn.net/Articles/533894/ + +Full TSX specification: +http://software.intel.com/file/41417 (chapter 8) + +Glossary: +cache line Aligned 64 byte region +conflict Another CPU writes to a cache line read in a elided lock region, + or reads from a cache line written to in the region. +abort Rolling back the transaction and undoing its side effect + +Andi Kleen -- 1.7.7.6 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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