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Message-ID: <9cb9c2177450b656819fd6ed2abe4c8d@codeaurora.org>
Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2016 11:11:43 -0400
From: bdegraaf@...eaurora.org
To: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>,
Timur Tabi <timur@...eaurora.org>,
Nathan Lynch <nathan_lynch@...tor.com>,
linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
Christopher Covington <cov@...eaurora.org>,
linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org
Subject: Re: [RFC] arm64: Enforce observed order for spinlock and data
On 2016-10-05 10:55, bdegraaf@...eaurora.org wrote:
> On 2016-10-04 15:12, Mark Rutland wrote:
>> Hi Brent,
>>
>> Could you *please* clarify if you are trying to solve:
>>
>> (a) a correctness issue (e.g. data corruption) seen in practice.
>> (b) a correctness issue (e.g. data corruption) found by inspection.
>> (c) A performance issue, seen in practice.
>> (d) A performance issue, found by inspection.
>>
>> Any one of these is fine; we just need to know in order to be able to
>> help effectively, and so far it hasn't been clear.
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 04, 2016 at 01:53:35PM -0400, bdegraaf@...eaurora.org
>> wrote:
>>> After looking at this, the problem is not with the lockref code per
>>> se: it is a problem with arch_spin_value_unlocked(). In the
>>> out-of-order case, arch_spin_value_unlocked() can return TRUE for a
>>> spinlock that is in fact locked but the lock is not observable yet
>>> via
>>> an ordinary load.
>>
>> Given arch_spin_value_unlocked() doesn't perform any load itself, I
>> assume the ordinary load that you are referring to is the READ_ONCE()
>> early in CMPXCHG_LOOP().
>>
>> It's worth noting that even if we ignore ordering and assume a
>> sequentially-consistent machine, READ_ONCE() can give us a stale
>> value.
>> We could perform the read, then another agent can acquire the lock,
>> then
>> we can move onto the cmpxchg(), i.e.
>>
>> CPU0 CPU1
>> old = READ_ONCE(x.lock_val)
>> spin_lock(x.lock)
>> cmpxchg(x.lock_val, old, new)
>> spin_unlock(x.lock)
>>
>> If the 'old' value is stale, the cmpxchg *must* fail, and the cmpxchg
>> should return an up-to-date value which we will then retry with.
>>
>>> Other than ensuring order on the locking side (as the prior patch
>>> did), there is a way to make arch_spin_value_unlock's TRUE return
>>> value deterministic,
>>
>> In general, this cannot be made deterministic. As above, there is a
>> race
>> that cannot be avoided.
>>
>>> but it requires that it does a write-back to the lock to ensure we
>>> didn't observe the unlocked value while another agent was in process
>>> of writing back a locked value.
>>
>> The cmpxchg gives us this guarantee. If it successfully stores, then
>> the
>> value it observed was the same as READ_ONCE() saw, and the update was
>> atomic.
>>
>> There *could* have been an intervening sequence between the READ_ONCE
>> and cmpxchg (e.g. put(); get()) but that's not problematic for
>> lockref.
>> Until you've taken your reference it was possible that things changed
>> underneath you.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mark.
>
> Mark,
>
> I found the problem.
>
> Back in September of 2013, arm64 atomics were broken due to missing
> barriers
> in certain situations, but the problem at that time was undiscovered.
>
> Will Deacon's commit d2212b4dce596fee83e5c523400bf084f4cc816c went in
> at that
> time and changed the correct cmpxchg64 in lockref.c to
> cmpxchg64_relaxed.
>
> d2212b4 appeared to be OK at that time because the additional barrier
> requirements of this specific code sequence were not yet discovered,
> and
> this change was consistent with the arm64 atomic code of that time.
>
> Around February of 2014, some discovery led Will to correct the problem
> with
> the atomic code via commit 8e86f0b409a44193f1587e87b69c5dcf8f65be67,
> which
> has an excellent explanation of potential ordering problems with the
> same
> code sequence used by lockref.c.
>
> With this updated understanding, the earlier commit
> (d2212b4dce596fee83e5c523400bf084f4cc816c) should be reverted.
>
> Because acquire/release semantics are insufficient for the full
> ordering,
> the single barrier after the store exclusive is the best approach,
> similar
> to Will's atomic barrier fix.
>
> Best regards,
> Brent
FYI, this is a "b" type fix (correctness fix based on code inspection).
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