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Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1109021222080.12963@kaball-desktop>
Date: Fri, 2 Sep 2011 12:22:31 +0100
From: Stefano Stabellini <stefano.stabellini@...citrix.com>
To: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>
CC: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
the arch/x86 maintainers <x86@...nel.org>,
Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
Nick Piggin <npiggin@...nel.dk>, Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com>,
Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@...hat.com>,
KVM <kvm@...r.kernel.org>, Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>,
Xen Devel <xen-devel@...ts.xensource.com>,
Jeremy Fitzhardinge <Jeremy.Fitzhardinge@...rix.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/13] [PATCH RFC] Paravirtualized ticketlocks
On Fri, 2 Sep 2011, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
> From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy.fitzhardinge@...rix.com>
>
> This series replaces the existing paravirtualized spinlock mechanism
> with a paravirtualized ticketlock mechanism.
>
> Ticket locks have an inherent problem in a virtualized case, because
> the vCPUs are scheduled rather than running concurrently (ignoring
> gang scheduled vCPUs). This can result in catastrophic performance
> collapses when the vCPU scheduler doesn't schedule the correct "next"
> vCPU, and ends up scheduling a vCPU which burns its entire timeslice
> spinning. (Note that this is not the same problem as lock-holder
> preemption, which this series also addresses; that's also a problem,
> but not catastrophic).
>
> (See Thomas Friebel's talk "Prevent Guests from Spinning Around"
> http://www.xen.org/files/xensummitboston08/LHP.pdf for more details.)
>
> Currently we deal with this by having PV spinlocks, which adds a layer
> of indirection in front of all the spinlock functions, and defining a
> completely new implementation for Xen (and for other pvops users, but
> there are none at present).
>
> PV ticketlocks keeps the existing ticketlock implemenentation
> (fastpath) as-is, but adds a couple of pvops for the slow paths:
>
> - If a CPU has been waiting for a spinlock for SPIN_THRESHOLD
> iterations, then call out to the __ticket_lock_spinning() pvop,
> which allows a backend to block the vCPU rather than spinning. This
> pvop can set the lock into "slowpath state".
>
> - When releasing a lock, if it is in "slowpath state", the call
> __ticket_unlock_kick() to kick the next vCPU in line awake. If the
> lock is no longer in contention, it also clears the slowpath flag.
>
> The "slowpath state" is stored in the LSB of the within the lock
> ticket. This has the effect of reducing the max number of CPUs by
> half (so, a "small ticket" can deal with 128 CPUs, and "large ticket"
> 32768).
>
> This series provides a Xen implementation, but it should be
> straightforward to add a KVM implementation as well.
>
> Overall, it results in a large reduction in code, it makes the native
> and virtualized cases closer, and it removes a layer of indirection
> around all the spinlock functions. The downside is that it does add a
> few instructions into the fastpath in the native case.
>
> Most of the heavy lifting code is in the slowpaths, but it does have
> an effect on the fastpath code. The inner part of ticket lock code
> becomes:
> inc = xadd(&lock->tickets, inc);
> inc.tail &= ~TICKET_SLOWPATH_FLAG;
>
> 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);
> }
>
> which results in:
>
> pushq %rbp
> movq %rsp,%rbp
>
> movl $512, %ecx
> lock; xaddw %cx, (%rdi) # claim ticket
>
> movzbl %ch, %edx
> movl $2048, %eax # set spin count
> andl $-2, %edx # mask off TICKET_SLOWPATH_FLAG
> movzbl %dl, %esi
>
> 1: cmpb %dl, %cl # compare head and tail
> je 2f # got it!
>
> ### BEGIN SLOWPATH
> rep; nop # pause
> decl %eax # dec count
> movb (%rdi), %cl # re-fetch head
> jne 1b # try again
>
> call *pv_lock_ops # call __ticket_lock_spinning
> movl $2048, %eax # reload spin count
> jmp 1b
> ### END SLOWPATH
>
> 2: popq %rbp
> ret
>
> with CONFIG_PARAVIRT_SPINLOCKS=n, the same code identical asm to the
> current ticketlock code:
>
> pushq %rbp
> movq %rsp, %rbp
>
> movl $256, %eax
> lock; xaddw %ax, (%rdi)
>
> movzbl %ah, %edx
>
> 1: cmpb %dl, %al # compare head and tail
> je 2f # got it!
>
> ### BEGIN SLOWPATH
> rep; nop # pause
> movb (%rdi), %al # reload head
> jmp 1b # loop
> ### END SLOWPATH
>
> 2: popq %rbp
> ret
>
> so the pv ticketlocks add 3 extra instructions to the fastpath, one of
> which really doesn't need to be there (setting up the arg for the
> slowpath function):
> movl $2048, %eax # set spin count
> andl $-2, %edx # mask off SLOW_PATH_FLAG
> movzbl %dl, %esi # set up __ticket_lock_spinning arg
>
> The unlock code is very straightforward:
> __ticket_unlock_release(lock);
> if (unlikely(__ticket_in_slowpath(lock)))
> __ticket_unlock_slowpath(lock);
> which generates:
> addb $2, (%rdi)
> testb $1, 1(%rdi)
> je 1f
> call __ticket_unlock_slowpath
> 1:
>
> which, while simple, is more complex than the simple "incb (%rdi)".
> (I'm not sure whether its worth inlining this or not.)
>
> Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
> J
>
> Jeremy Fitzhardinge (12):
> x86/spinlocks: replace pv spinlocks with pv ticketlocks
> x86/ticketlock: collapse a layer of functions
> xen/pvticketlock: Xen implementation for PV ticket locks
> x86/pvticketlock: use callee-save for lock_spinning
> x86/ticketlocks: when paravirtualizing ticket locks, increment by 2
> x86/ticketlock: add slowpath logic
> x86/ticketlocks: tidy up __ticket_unlock_kick()
> xen/pvticketlock: disable interrupts while blocking
> x86/pvticketlocks: we only need to kick if there's waiters
> xen/pvticket: allow interrupts to be enabled while blocking
> x86/pvticketlock: make sure unlock_kick pvop call is inlined
> x86/pvticketlock: use __ticket_t for pvop args
>
> Srivatsa Vaddagiri (1):
> x86/ticketlock: only do kick after doing unlock
>
> arch/x86/include/asm/paravirt.h | 30 +---
> arch/x86/include/asm/paravirt_types.h | 8 +-
> arch/x86/include/asm/spinlock.h | 118 ++++++++-----
> arch/x86/include/asm/spinlock_types.h | 16 ++-
> arch/x86/kernel/paravirt-spinlocks.c | 40 +++--
> arch/x86/xen/spinlock.c | 305 ++++++++-------------------------
> 6 files changed, 186 insertions(+), 331 deletions(-)
do you have a git tree somewhere with this series?
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