netdev - Re: [PATCH 2/2] udp: RCU handling for Unicast packets.

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Date:	Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:57:44 +0100
From:	Eric Dumazet <dada1@...mosbay.com>
To:	Corey Minyard <minyard@....org>
CC:	paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com, David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
	shemminger@...tta.com, benny+usenet@...rsen.dk,
	netdev@...r.kernel.org,
	Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux-foundation.org>,
	a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl, johnpol@....mipt.ru,
	Christian Bell <christian@...i.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] udp: RCU handling for Unicast packets.

Corey Minyard a écrit :
> Paul E. McKenney wrote:
>> O
> ..snip
>>> Hum... Another way of handling all those cases and avoid memory barriers
>>> would be to have different "NULL" pointers.
>>>
>>> Each hash chain should have a unique "NULL" pointer (in the case of 
>>> UDP, it
>>> can be the 128 values : [ (void*)0 .. (void *)127 ]
>>>
>>> Then, when performing a lookup, a reader should check the "NULL" pointer
>>> it get at the end of its lookup has is the "hash" value of its chain.
>>>
>>> If not -> restart the loop, aka "goto begin;" :)
>>>
>>> We could avoid memory barriers then.
>>>
>>> In the two cases Corey mentioned, this trick could let us avoid 
>>> memory barriers.
>>> (existing one in sk_add_node_rcu(sk, &hslot->head); should be enough)
>>>
>>> What do you think ?
>>>     
>>
>> Kinky!!!  ;-)
>>   
> My thought exactly ;-).
> 
>> Then the rcu_dereference() would be supplying the needed memory barriers.
>>
>> Hmmm...  I guess that the only confusion would be if the element got
>> removed and then added to the same list.  But then if its pointer was
>> pseudo-NULL, then that would mean that all subsequent elements had been
>> removed, and all preceding ones added after the scan started.
>>
>> Which might well be harmless, but I must defer to you on this one at
>> the moment.
>>   
> I believe that is harmless, as re-scanning the same data should be fine.
> 
>> If you need a larger hash table, another approach would be to set the
>> pointer's low-order bit, allowing the upper bits to be a full-sized
>> index -- or even a pointer to the list header.  Just make very sure
>> to clear the pointer when freeing, or an element on the freelist
>> could end up looking like a legitimate end of list...  Which again
>> might well be safe, but why inflict this on oneself?
>>   
> Kind of my thought, too.  That's a lot of work to avoid a single 
> smb_wmb() on the socket creation path.  Plus this could be extra confusing.
> 

Sure this smp_wmb() seems harmless (but, remember this infrastructure will
next be deployed for TCP sockets as well ;) )

But saving smp_rmb() at lookup time, for each item is a clear win, no ?



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