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

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Date:   Thu, 17 Jun 2021 11:37:27 +1000
From:   Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>
To:     Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Cc:     Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...icios.com>,
        x86@...nel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/8] membarrier: Make the post-switch-mm barrier explicit

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.

Thanks,
Nick