linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH 1/1] rcu: use atomic_read(v) instead of atomic_add

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Date:	Thu, 10 Jul 2014 21:17:33 -0400
From:	Pranith Kumar <bobby.prani@...il.com>
To:	Paul McKenney <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc:	Josh Triplett <josh@...htriplett.org>,
	"open list:READ-COPY UPDATE..." <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 1/1] rcu: use atomic_read(v) instead of
 atomic_add_return(0, v)

On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 3:56 PM, Paul E. McKenney
<paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
<snip>
> OK, so ->dynticks_snap is accessed by only one task, namely the
> corresponding RCU grace-period kthread.  So it can be accessed without
> any atomic instructions or memory barriers, since all accesses to it are
> single-threaded.  On the other hand, ->dynticks is written by one CPU
> and potentially accessed from any CPU.  Therefore, accesses to it must
> take concurrency into account.  Especially given that any confusion can
> fool RCU into thinking that a CPU is idle when it really is not, which
> could result in too-short grace periods, which could in turn result in
> random memory corruption.
>

Yes, I missed reading the call-chain for accessing dynticks_snap. It
does not need any synchronization/barriers.

Here since we are reading ->dynticks, doesn't having one barrier
before reading make sense? like

smp_mb();
dynticks_snap = atomic_read(...->dynticks);

instead of having two barriers with atomic_add_return()? i.e.,
why is the second barrier necessary?

On a related note, I see that dynticks is a per-cpu variable _and_
atomic. Is there such a need for that?

Digging into history I see that the change to an atomic variable was
made in the commit 23b5c8fa01b723c70a which says:

<quote>

In addition, the old dyntick-idle synchronization depended on the fact
that grace periods were many milliseconds in duration, so that it could
be assumed that no dyntick-idle CPU could reorder a memory reference
across an entire grace period.  Unfortunately for this design, the
addition of expedited grace periods breaks this assumption, which has
the unfortunate side-effect of requiring atomic operations in the
functions that track dyntick-idle state for RCU.

</quote>

Sorry to ask you about such an old change. But I am not able to see
why we need atomic_t for dynticks here since per-cpu operations are
guaranteed to be atomic.

It gets twisted pretty fast trying to understand the RCU code. No
wonder people say that rcu is scary black magic :)

-- 
Pranith
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