linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 4/8] membarrier: Make the post-switch-mm barrier explicit

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Date:   Thu, 17 Jun 2021 16:49:29 -0700
From:   Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>
To:     Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>,
        "Peter Zijlstra (Intel)" <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Rik van Riel <riel@...riel.com>
Cc:     Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-mm@...ck.org,
        Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...icios.com>,
        "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...nel.org>,
        the arch/x86 maintainers <x86@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/8] membarrier: Make the post-switch-mm barrier explicit

On 6/16/21 11:51 PM, Nicholas Piggin wrote:
> Excerpts from Andy Lutomirski's message of June 17, 2021 3:32 pm:
>> On Wed, Jun 16, 2021, at 7:57 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 16, 2021, at 6:37 PM, Nicholas Piggin wrote:
>>>> Excerpts from Andy Lutomirski's message of June 17, 2021 4:41 am:
>>>>> On 6/16/21 12:35 AM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>>>>>> On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 02:19:49PM +1000, Nicholas Piggin wrote:
>>>>>>> Excerpts from Andy Lutomirski's message of June 16, 2021 1:21 pm:
>>>>>>>> membarrier() needs a barrier after any CPU changes mm.  There is currently
>>>>>>>> a comment explaining why this barrier probably exists in all cases.  This
>>>>>>>> is very fragile -- any change to the relevant parts of the scheduler
>>>>>>>> might get rid of these barriers, and it's not really clear to me that
>>>>>>>> the barrier actually exists in all necessary cases.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The comments and barriers in the mmdrop() hunks? I don't see what is 
>>>>>>> fragile or maybe-buggy about this. The barrier definitely exists.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> And any change can change anything, that doesn't make it fragile. My
>>>>>>> lazy tlb refcounting change avoids the mmdrop in some cases, but it
>>>>>>> replaces it with smp_mb for example.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm with Nick again, on this. You're adding extra barriers for no
>>>>>> discernible reason, that's not generally encouraged, seeing how extra
>>>>>> barriers is extra slow.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Both mmdrop() itself, as well as the callsite have comments saying how
>>>>>> membarrier relies on the implied barrier, what's fragile about that?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> My real motivation is that mmgrab() and mmdrop() don't actually need to
>>>>> be full barriers.  The current implementation has them being full
>>>>> barriers, and the current implementation is quite slow.  So let's try
>>>>> that commit message again:
>>>>>
>>>>> membarrier() needs a barrier after any CPU changes mm.  There is currently
>>>>> a comment explaining why this barrier probably exists in all cases. The
>>>>> logic is based on ensuring that the barrier exists on every control flow
>>>>> path through the scheduler.  It also relies on mmgrab() and mmdrop() being
>>>>> full barriers.
>>>>>
>>>>> mmgrab() and mmdrop() would be better if they were not full barriers.  As a
>>>>> trivial optimization, mmgrab() could use a relaxed atomic and mmdrop()
>>>>> could use a release on architectures that have these operations.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not against the idea, I've looked at something similar before (not
>>>> for mmdrop but a different primitive). Also my lazy tlb shootdown series 
>>>> could possibly take advantage of this, I might cherry pick it and test 
>>>> performance :)
>>>>
>>>> I don't think it belongs in this series though. Should go together with
>>>> something that takes advantage of it.
>>>
>>> I’m going to see if I can get hazard pointers into shape quickly.
>>
>> Here it is.  Not even boot tested!
>>
>> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/luto/linux.git/commit/?h=sched/lazymm&id=ecc3992c36cb88087df9c537e2326efb51c95e31
>>
>> Nick, I think you can accomplish much the same thing as your patch by:
>>
>> #define for_each_possible_lazymm_cpu while (false)
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean? For powerpc, other CPUs can be using the mm 
> as lazy at this point. I must be missing something.

What I mean is: if you want to shoot down lazies instead of doing the
hazard pointer trick to track them, you could do:

#define for_each_possible_lazymm_cpu while (false)

which would promise to the core code that you don't have any lazies left
by the time exit_mmap() is done.  You might need a new hook in
exit_mmap() depending on exactly how you implement the lazy shootdown.