linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH RFC 02/12] x86/ticketlock: convert spin loop to C

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Date:	Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:03:57 -0700
From:	Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>
To:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
CC:	Jan Beulich <JBeulich@...ell.com>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Xen-devel <xen-devel@...ts.xensource.com>,
	Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com>, Nick Piggin <npiggin@...e.de>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC 02/12] x86/ticketlock: convert spin loop to C

  On 08/06/2010 02:09 PM, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 08/06/2010 01:33 PM, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
>> On 08/06/2010 01:17 PM, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>>> On 08/06/2010 07:53 AM, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
>>>> On 08/06/2010 05:43 AM, Jan Beulich wrote:
>>>>> You certainly mean "the compiler currently treats this as being:" - I
>>>>> don't think there's a guarantee it'll always be doing so.
>>>>>
>>>>>> for (;;) {
>>>>>> if (inc.tickets.head == inc.tickets.tail)
>>>>>> goto out;
>>>>>> ...
>>>>>> }
>>>>>> out: barrier();
>>>>>> }
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (Which would probably be a reasonable way to clarify the code.)
>>>>> I therefore think it needs to be written this way.
>>>>
>>>> Agreed.
>>>>
>>>
>>> A call/return to an actual out-of-line function is a barrier (and will
>>> always be a barrier, as it is the fundamental ABI sequence points),
>>> but to an inline function it is not.
>>
>> Yes. So the goto explicitly puts the barrier into the control flow which
>> should stop the compiler from doing anything unexpected.
>>
>
> In this particular case, though, I would somewhat expect the more 
> conventional:
>
> while (inc.tickets.head != inc.tickets.tail) {
>     cpu_relax();
>     inc.tickets.head = ACCESS_ONCE(lock->tickets_head);
> }

Yes, that makes sense for the plain spinlock version.  But the full 
code, including the pv-ticketlock spin timeout, ends up being:

static __always_inline void arch_spin_lock(struct arch_spinlock *lock)
{
	register struct __raw_tickets inc;

	inc = __ticket_spin_claim(lock);

	for (;;) {
		unsigned count = SPIN_THRESHOLD;

		do {
			if (inc.head == inc.tail)
				goto out;
			cpu_relax();
			inc.head = ACCESS_ONCE(lock->tickets.head);
		} while (--count);
		__ticket_lock_spinning(lock, inc.tail);
	}
out:	barrier();		/* make sure nothing creeps before the lock is taken */
}

So the goto form is closer to the final form.  If it weren't for this, 
I'd also prefer the while() form.

(If you config PARAVIRT_SPINLOCKS=n, then __ticket_lock_spinning() 
becomes an empty inline, which causes gcc to collapse the whole thing 
into a simple infinite loop (ie, it eliminates "count" and the inner loop).)


     J
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