linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 2/2] mm: add PageWaiters indicating tasks are waiting for a page bit

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Date:   Tue, 27 Dec 2016 11:23:19 -0800
From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>
Cc:     Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>,
        Bob Peterson <rpeterso@...hat.com>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Steven Whitehouse <swhiteho@...hat.com>,
        Andrew Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Andreas Gruenbacher <agruenba@...hat.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        Mel Gorman <mgorman@...hsingularity.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] mm: add PageWaiters indicating tasks are waiting for
 a page bit

On Tue, Dec 27, 2016 at 10:58 AM, Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
>
> The other alternative is to keep the lock bit as bit #0, and just make
> the contention bit be the high bit. Then, on x86, you can do
>
>     lock andb $0xfe,flags
>     js contention
>
> which might be even better. Again, it would be a very special
> operation just for unlock. Something like
>
>    bit_clear_and_branch_if_negative_byte(mem, label);
>
> and again, it would be trivial to do on most architectures.
>
> Let me try to write a patch or two for testing.

Ok, that was easy.

Of course, none of this is *tested*, but it looks superficially
correct, and allows other architectures to do the same optimization if
they want.

On x86, the unlock_page() code now generates

        lock; andb $1,(%rdi)    #, MEM[(volatile long int *)_7]
        js      .L114   #,
        popq    %rbp    #
        ret

for the actual unlock itself.

Now to actually compile the whole thing and see if it boots..

                 Linus