When running workloads that have high contention in mutexes on an 8 socket machine, mutex spinners would often spin for a long time with no lock owner. The main reason why this is occuring is in __mutex_unlock_common_slowpath(), if __mutex_slowpath_needs_to_unlock(), then the owner needs to acquire the mutex->wait_lock before releasing the mutex (setting lock->count to 1). When the wait_lock is contended, this delays the mutex from being released. We should be able to release the mutex without holding the wait_lock. Cc: chegu_vinod@hp.com Cc: paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com Cc: Waiman.Long@hp.com Cc: torvalds@linux-foundation.org Cc: tglx@linutronix.de Cc: riel@redhat.com Cc: akpm@linux-foundation.org Cc: davidlohr@hp.com Cc: hpa@zytor.com Cc: andi@firstfloor.org Cc: aswin@hp.com Cc: mingo@kernel.org Cc: scott.norton@hp.com Signed-off-by: Jason Low Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1390936396-3962-4-git-send-email-jason.low2@hp.com --- kernel/locking/mutex.c | 8 ++++---- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) --- a/kernel/locking/mutex.c +++ b/kernel/locking/mutex.c @@ -673,10 +673,6 @@ __mutex_unlock_common_slowpath(atomic_t struct mutex *lock = container_of(lock_count, struct mutex, count); unsigned long flags; - spin_lock_mutex(&lock->wait_lock, flags); - mutex_release(&lock->dep_map, nested, _RET_IP_); - debug_mutex_unlock(lock); - /* * some architectures leave the lock unlocked in the fastpath failure * case, others need to leave it locked. In the later case we have to @@ -685,6 +681,10 @@ __mutex_unlock_common_slowpath(atomic_t if (__mutex_slowpath_needs_to_unlock()) atomic_set(&lock->count, 1); + spin_lock_mutex(&lock->wait_lock, flags); + mutex_release(&lock->dep_map, nested, _RET_IP_); + debug_mutex_unlock(lock); + if (!list_empty(&lock->wait_list)) { /* get the first entry from the wait-list: */ struct mutex_waiter *waiter = -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/