linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2 05/10] x86/mm: Rework lazy TLB mode and TLB freshness tracking

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Message-ID: <1619e0d4-683d-c129-a132-383c7495d285@suse.com>
Date:   Wed, 14 Jun 2017 08:09:51 +0200
From:   Juergen Gross <jgross@...e.com>
To:     Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>, x86@...nel.org
Cc:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>,
        "linux-mm@...ck.org" <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        Nadav Amit <nadav.amit@...il.com>,
        Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>,
        Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...ux.intel.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Andrew Banman <abanman@....com>, Mike Travis <travis@....com>,
        Dimitri Sivanich <sivanich@....com>,
        Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@...cle.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 05/10] x86/mm: Rework lazy TLB mode and TLB freshness
 tracking

On 14/06/17 06:56, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> x86's lazy TLB mode used to be fairly weak -- it would switch to
> init_mm the first time it tried to flush a lazy TLB.  This meant an
> unnecessary CR3 write and, if the flush was remote, an unnecessary
> IPI.
> 
> Rewrite it entirely.  When we enter lazy mode, we simply remove the
> cpu from mm_cpumask.  This means that we need a way to figure out
> whether we've missed a flush when we switch back out of lazy mode.
> I use the tlb_gen machinery to track whether a context is up to
> date.
> 
> Note to reviewers: this patch, my itself, looks a bit odd.  I'm
> using an array of length 1 containing (ctx_id, tlb_gen) rather than
> just storing tlb_gen, and making it at array isn't necessary yet.
> I'm doing this because the next few patches add PCID support, and,
> with PCID, we need ctx_id, and the array will end up with a length
> greater than 1.  Making it an array now means that there will be
> less churn and therefore less stress on your eyeballs.
> 
> NB: This is dubious but, AFAICT, still correct on Xen and UV.
> xen_exit_mmap() uses mm_cpumask() for nefarious purposes and this
> patch changes the way that mm_cpumask() works.  This should be okay,
> since Xen *also* iterates all online CPUs to find all the CPUs it
> needs to twiddle.

There is a allocation failure path in xen_drop_mm_ref() which might
be wrong with this patch. As this path should be taken only very
unlikely I'd suggest to remove the test for mm_cpumask() bit zero in
this path.


Juergen