Message-ID: <874irimm6d.fsf@oracle.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2025 20:17:14 -0700
From: Ankur Arora <ankur.a.arora@...cle.com>
To: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
Cc: Ankur Arora <ankur.a.arora@...cle.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Linux-Arch <linux-arch@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, linux-pm@...r.kernel.org,
        bpf@...r.kernel.org, Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
        Will
 Deacon <will@...nel.org>, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Andrew
 Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>,
        Haris Okanovic <harisokn@...zon.com>,
        "Christoph Lameter (Ampere)"
 <cl@...two.org>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...nel.org>,
        "Rafael J . Wysocki"
 <rafael@...nel.org>,
        Daniel Lezcano <daniel.lezcano@...aro.org>,
        Kumar
 Kartikeya Dwivedi <memxor@...il.com>, zhenglifeng1@...wei.com,
        xueshuai@...ux.alibaba.com, Joao Martins <joao.m.martins@...cle.com>,
        Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@...cle.com>,
        Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk
 <konrad.wilk@...cle.com>
Subject: Re: [RESEND PATCH v7 1/7] asm-generic: barrier: Add
 smp_cond_load_relaxed_timeout()


Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de> writes:

> On Tue, Oct 28, 2025, at 06:31, Ankur Arora wrote:
>
>> + */
>> +#ifndef smp_cond_load_relaxed_timeout
>> +#define smp_cond_load_relaxed_timeout(ptr, cond_expr, time_check_expr)	\
>> +({									\
>> +	typeof(ptr) __PTR = (ptr);					\
>> +	__unqual_scalar_typeof(*ptr) VAL;				\
>> +	u32 __n = 0, __spin = SMP_TIMEOUT_POLL_COUNT;			\
>> +									\
>> +	for (;;) {							\
>> +		VAL = READ_ONCE(*__PTR);				\
>> +		if (cond_expr)						\
>> +			break;						\
>> +		cpu_poll_relax(__PTR, VAL);				\
>> +		if (++__n < __spin)					\
>> +			continue;					\
>> +		if (time_check_expr) {					\
>> +			VAL = READ_ONCE(*__PTR);			\
>> +			break;						\
>> +		}							\
>> +		__n = 0;						\
>> +	}								\
>> +	(typeof(*ptr))VAL;						\
>> +})
>> +#endif
>
> I'm trying to think of ideas for how this would done on arm64
> with FEAT_FWXT in a way that doesn't hurt other architectures.
>
> The best idea I've come up with is to change that inner loop
> to combine the cpu_poll_relax() with the timecheck and then
> define the 'time_check_expr' so it has to return an approximate
> (ceiling) number of nanoseconds of remaining time or zero if
> expired.

Agree that it's a pretty good idea :). I came up with something pretty
similar. Though that had taken a bunch of iterations.

> The FEAT_WFXT version would then look something like
>
> static inline void __cmpwait_u64_timeout(volatile u64 *ptr, unsigned long val, __u64 ns)
> {
>    unsigned long tmp;
>    asm volatile ("sev; wfe; ldxr; eor; cbnz; wfet; 1:"
>         : "=&r" (tmp), "+Q" (*ptr)
>         : "r" (val), "r" (ns));
> }
> #define cpu_poll_relax_timeout_wfet(__PTR, VAL, TIMECHECK) \
> ({                                                    \
>        u64 __t = TIMECHECK;
>        if (__t)
>             __cmpwait_u64_timeout(__PTR, VAL, __t);
> })
>
> while the 'wfe' version would continue to do the timecheck after the
> wait.

I think this is a good way to do it if we need the precision
at some point in the future.

> I have two lesser concerns with the generic definition here:
>
> - having both a timeout and a spin counter in the same loop
>   feels redundant and error-prone, as the behavior in practice
>   would likely depend a lot on the platform. What is the reason
>   for keeping the counter if we already have a fixed timeout
>   condition?

The main reason was that the time check is expensive in power terms.
Which is fine for platforms with a WFE like primitive but others
want to do the time check only infrequently. That's why poll_idle()
introduced a rate limit on polling (which the generic definition
reused here.)

    commit 4dc2375c1a4e88ed2701f6961e0e4f9a7696ad3c
    Author: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@...el.com>
    Date:   Tue Mar 27 23:58:45 2018 +0200

    cpuidle: poll_state: Avoid invoking local_clock() too often

    Rik reports that he sees an increase in CPU use in one benchmark
    due to commit 612f1a22f067 "cpuidle: poll_state: Add time limit to
    poll_idle()" that caused poll_idle() to call local_clock() in every
    iteration of the loop.  Utilization increase generally means more
    non-idle time with respect to total CPU time (on the average) which
    implies reduced CPU frequency.

    Doug reports that limiting the rate of local_clock() invocations
    in there causes much less power to be drawn during a CPU-intensive
    parallel workload (with idle states 1 and 2 disabled to enforce more
    state 0 residency).

    These two reports together suggest that executing local_clock() on
    multiple CPUs in parallel at a high rate may cause chips to get hot
    and trigger thermal/power limits on them to kick in, so reduce the
    rate of local_clock() invocations in poll_idle() to avoid that issue.

> - I generally dislike the type-agnostic macros like this one,
>   it adds a lot of extra complexity here that I feel can be
>   completely avoided if we make explicitly 32-bit and 64-bit
>   wide versions of these macros. We probably won't be able
>   to resolve this as part of your series, but ideally I'd like
>   have explicitly-typed versions of cmpxchg(), smp_load_acquire()
>   and all the related ones, the same way we do for atomic_*()
>   and atomic64_*().

Ah. And the caller uses say smp_load_acquire_long() or whatever, and
that resolves to whatever makes sense for the arch.

The __unqual_scalar_typeof() does look pretty ugly when looking at the
preprocesed version but other than that smp_cond_load() etc look
pretty straight forward. Just for my curiousity could you elaborate on
the complexity?

--
ankur

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