netdev - [PATCH -tip 0/3] expedited "big hammer" RCU grace periods

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Message-ID: <20090625160706.GA9467@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Date:	Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:07:06 -0700
From:	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
	netfilter-devel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:	mingo@...e.hu, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
	torvalds@...ux-foundation.org, davem@...emloft.net,
	dada1@...mosbay.com, zbr@...emap.net, jeff.chua.linux@...il.com,
	paulus@...ba.org, laijs@...fujitsu.com, jengelh@...ozas.de,
	r000n@...0n.net, benh@...nel.crashing.org,
	mathieu.desnoyers@...ymtl.ca
Subject: [PATCH -tip 0/3] expedited "big hammer" RCU grace periods

Respin of http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/6/24/350 to allow for the removal
of Classic RCU (in favor of Hierarchical RCU) from the -tip tree.

This patch set implements the "big hammer" expedited RCU grace periods.
This leverages the existing per-CPU migration kthreads, as suggested
by Ingo.  These are awakened in a loop, and waited for in a second loop.
Not fully scalable, but removing the extra hop through smp_call_function
reduces latency on systems with moderate numbers of CPUs.  The
synchronize_rcu_expedited() and synchronize_bh_expedited() primitives
invoke synchronize_sched_expedited(), except for CONFIG_PREEMPT_RCU,
where they instead invoke synchronize_rcu() and synchronize_rcu_bh(),
respectively.  This will be fixed in the future, after preemptable RCU
is folded into the rcutree implementation.

As before, this does nothing to expedite callbacks already registered
with call_rcu() or call_rcu_bh(), but there is no need to.

Passes many hours of rcutorture testing in parallel with a script
that randomly offlines and onlines CPUs in a number of configurations.
Grace periods take about 40 microseconds on an 8-CPU Power machine, which
I believe is good enough from a performance viewpoint for the near future.
This represents some slowdown from v7, which was unfortunately necessary
to fix some bugs.

This is finally ready for inclusion.  ;-)

Shortcomings:

o	Does not address preemptable RCU (though synchronize_sched_expedited()
	is in fact expedited in this configuration).

o	Probably not helpful on systems with thousands of CPUs, but likely
	quite helpful even on systems with a few hundred CPUs.

Changes since v7:

o	Fixed several embarrassing bugs turned up by tests on multiple
	configurations.

Changes since v6:

o	Moved to using the migration threads, as suggested by Ingo.

Changes since v5:

o	Fixed several embarrassing locking bugs, including those
	noted by Ingo and Lai.

o	Added a missing set of braces.

o	Cut out the extra kthread, so that synchronize_sched_expedited()
	directly calls smp_call_function() and waits for the quiescent
	states.

o	Removed some debug code, but promoted one to production.

o	Fix a compiler warning.

Changes since v4:

o	Use per-CPU kthreads to force the quiescent states in parallel.

Changes since v3:

o	Use a kthread that schedules itself on each CPU in turn to
	force a grace period.  The synchronize_rcu() primitive
	wakes up the kthread in order to avoid messing with affinity
	masks on user tasks.

o	Tried a number of additional variations on the v3 approach, none
	of which helped much.

Changes since v2:

o	Use reschedule IPIs rather than a softirq.

Changes since v1:

o	Added rcutorture support, and added exports required by
	rcutorture.

o	Added comment stating that smp_call_function() implies a
	memory barrier, suggested by Mathieu.

o	Added #include for delay.h.

 Documentation/RCU/RTFP.txt       |   77 ++++++++++++++
 Documentation/RCU/UP.txt         |   34 ++++--
 Documentation/RCU/checklist.txt  |   20 ++-
 Documentation/RCU/rcubarrier.txt |    7 +
 Documentation/RCU/torture.txt    |   23 ++++
 Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt  |   15 ++
 include/linux/rcupdate.h         |   25 ++--
 include/linux/rcupreempt.h       |   10 +
 include/linux/rcutree.h          |   12 ++
 kernel/rcupdate.c                |   25 ++++
 kernel/rcutorture.c              |  203 +++++++++++++++++++++------------------
 kernel/sched.c                   |  130 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
 12 files changed, 452 insertions(+), 129 deletions(-)
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