netdev - Re: [PATCH] percpu: add optimized generic percpu accessors

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Date:	Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:56:34 +0900
From:	Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>
To:	Rusty Russell <rusty@...tcorp.com.au>
CC:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>,
	akpm@...ux-foundation.org, hpa@...or.com, brgerst@...il.com,
	ebiederm@...ssion.com, cl@...ux-foundation.org, travis@....com,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, steiner@....com, hugh@...itas.com,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
	Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...ymtl.ca>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] percpu: add optimized generic percpu accessors

Hello,

Rusty Russell wrote:
> On Tuesday 27 January 2009 12:54:27 Tejun Heo wrote:
>> Hello, Rusty.
> 
> Hi Tejun!
> 
>> There actually were quite some places where atomic add ops would be
>> useful, especially the places where statistics are collected.  For
>> logical bitops, I don't think we'll have too many of them.
> 
> If the stats are only manipulated in one context, than an atomic
> requirement is overkill (and expensive on non-x86).

Yes, it is.  I was hoping it to be not more expensive on most archs.
It isn't on x86 at the very least but I don't know much about other
archs.

>>> If they are worth doing generically, should the ops be atomic? To
>>> extrapolate from x86 usages again, it seems to be happy with
>>> non-atomic (tho of course it is atomic on x86).
>> If atomic rw/add/sub are implementible on most archs (and judging from
>> local_t, I suppose it is), I think it should.  So that it can replace
>> local_t and we won't need something else again in the future.
> 
> This is more like Christoph's CPU_OPS: they were special operators
> on normal per-cpu vars/ptrs.  Generic version was
> irqsave+op+irqrestore.
>
> I actually like this idea, but Mathieu insists that the ops be
> NMI-safe, for ftrace.  Hence local_t needing to be atomic_t for
> generic code.
> 
> AFAICT we'll need a hybrid: HAVE_NMISAFE_CPUOPS, and if not, use
> atomic_t in ftrace (which isn't NMI safe on parisc or sparc/32
> anyway, but I don't think we care).

Requiring NMI-safeness is quite an exception, I suppose.  I don't
think we should design around it.  If it can be worked around one way
or the other, it should be fine.

> Other than the shouting, I liked Christoph's system:
> - CPU_INC = always safe (eg. local_irq_save/per_cpu(i)++/local_irq_restore)
> - _CPU_INC = not safe against interrupts (eg. get_cpu/per_cpu(i)++/put_cpu)
> - __CPU_INC = not safe against anything (eg. per_cpu(i)++)
> 
> I prefer the name 'local' to the name 'cpu', but I'm not hugely fussed.

I like local better too but no biggies one way or the other.

>>>> Another question to ask is whether to keep using separate
>>>> interfaces for static and dynamic percpu variables or migrate to
>>>> something which can take both.
>>> Well, IA64 can do stuff with static percpus that it can't do with
>>> dynamic (assuming we get expanding dynamic percpu areas
>>> later). That's because they use TLB tricks for a static 64k per-cpu
>>> area, but this doesn't scale.  That might not be vital: abandoning
>>> that trick will mean they can't optimise read_percpu/read_percpu_var
>>> etc as much.
>> Isn't something like the following possible?
>>
>> #define pcpu_read(ptr)						\
>> ({								\
>> 	if (__builtin_constant_p(ptr) &&			\
>> 	    ptr >= PCPU_STATIC_START && ptr < PCPU_STATIC_END)	\
>> 		do 64k TLB trick for static pcpu;		\
>> 	else							\
>> 		do generic stuff;				\
>> })
> 
> No, that will be "do generic stuff", since it's a link-time
> constant.  I don't know that this is a huge worry, to be honest.  We
> can leave the __ia64_per_cpu_var for their arch-specific code (I
> feel the same way about x86 to be honest).

Yes, right.  Got confused there.  Hmmm... looks like what would work
there is "is it a lvalue?" test.  Well, anyways, if it isn't
necessary.

>>> Tejun, any chance of you updating the tj-percpu tree? My current
>>> patches are against Linus's tree, and rebasing them on yours
>>> involves some icky merging.
>> If Ingo is okay with it, I'm fine with it too.  Unless Ingo objects,
>> I'll do it tomorrow-ish (still big holiday here).
> 
> Ah, I did not realize that you celebrated Australia day :)

Hey, didn't know Australia was founded on lunar New Year's day.
Nice. :-)

Thanks.

-- 
tejun
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