linux-kernel - Re: Q: schedule() and implied barriers on arm64

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Date:	Tue, 20 Oct 2015 10:37:21 +0200
From:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>
To:	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Cc:	Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: Q: schedule() and implied barriers on arm64


* Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 04:21:08PM +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 09:06:05AM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > > * Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > In any case, its all moot now, since Paul no longer requires schedule() to imply 
> > > > a full barrier.
> > > >
> > > > [...]
> > > 
> > > Nevertheless from a least-surprise POV it might be worth guaranteeing it, 
> > > because I bet there's tons of code that assumes that schedule() is a heavy 
> > > operation and it's such an easy mistake to make. Since we are so close to 
> > > having that guarantee, we might as well codify it?
> > 
> > FWIW, the arm64 __switch_to() has a heavy barrier (DSB) but the reason for 
> > this was to cope with potentially interrupted cache or TLB maintenance (which 
> > require a DSB on the same CPU) and thread migration to another CPU.
> 
> Right, but there's a path through schedule() that does not pass through 
> __switch_to(); when we pick the current task as the most eligible task and next 
> == prev.
> 
> In that case there really only is the wmb, a spin lock, an atomic op and a spin 
> unlock (and a whole bunch of 'normal' code of course).

Yeah, so my concern is that this is a rare race that might be 'surprising' for 
developers relying on various schedule() constructs. Especially as it's a full 
barrier on x86 (the most prominent SMP platform at the moment) there's a real 
danger of hard to debug bugs creeping to other architectures.

So I think we should just do the small step of making it a full barrier everywhere 
- it's very close to it in any case, and it shouldn't really matter for 
performance. Agreed?


Thanks,

	Ingo
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