linux-kernel - Re: [rfc] "fair" rw spinlocks

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Date:	Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:49:10 -0800 (PST)
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
cc:	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
	Nick Piggin <npiggin@...e.de>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [rfc] "fair" rw spinlocks

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> 
> I'm aware of that. The number of places where we read_lock
> tasklist_lock is 79 in 36 files right now. That's not a horrible task
> to go through them one by one and do a case by case conversion with a
> proper changelog. That would only leave the write_lock sites. 

The write_lock sites should be fine, since just changing them to a 
spinlock should be 100% semantically equivalent - except for the lack of 
interrupt disable. And the lack of interrupt disable will result in a nice 
big deadlock if some interrupt really does take the spinlock, which is 
much easier to debug than a subtle race that would get the wrong read 
value.

> We can then either do the rw_lock to spin_lock conversion or keep the
> rw_lock which has no readers anymore and behaves like a spinlock for a
> transition time so reverts of one of the read_lock -> rcu patches
> could be done to debug stuff.

So as per the above, I wouldn't worry about the write lockers. Might as 
well change it to a spinlock, since that's what it will act as. It's not 
as if there is any chance that the spinlock code is subtly buggy.

So the only reason to keep it as a rwlock would be if you decide to do the 
read-locked cases one by one, and don't end up with all of them converted. 
Which is a reasonable strategy too, of course. We don't _have_ to convert 
them all - if the main problem is some starvation issue, it's sufficient 
to convert just the main read-lock cases so that writers never get 
starved.

But converting it all would be nice, because that whole

	write_lock_irq(&tasklist_lock);

to

	spin_lock(&tasklist_lock);

conversion would likely be a measurable performance win. Both because 
spinlocks are fundamentally faster (no atomic on unlock), and because you 
get rid of the irq disable/enable. But in order to get there, you'd have 
to convert _all_ the read-lockers, so you'd miss the opportunity to only 
convert the easy cases.

			Linus
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