Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]


Groups > linux.kernel > #1457949

Re: [PATCH v4 3/3] locking/mutex: Ensure forward progress of waiter-spinner

From Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Newsgroups linux.kernel
Subject Re: [PATCH v4 3/3] locking/mutex: Ensure forward progress of waiter-spinner
Date 2016-08-08 19:40 +0200
Message-ID <s3WGR-4qo-29@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
References <rWnux-2E0-3@gated-at.bofh.it> <rWnux-2E0-1@gated-at.bofh.it>
Organization linux.* mail to news gateway

Show all headers | View raw


On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 04:39:26PM -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
> As both an optimistic spinner and a waiter-spinner (a woken task from
> the wait queue spinning) can be spinning on the lock at the same time,
> we cannot ensure forward progress for the waiter-spinner. Therefore,
> it is possible for the waiter-spinner to be starved of getting the
> lock, though not likely.

Right; yet your previous two changelogs/comments implied otherwise.

> This patch adds a flag to indicate that a waiter-spinner is
> spinning and hence has priority over the acquisition of the lock. A
> waiter-spinner sets this flag while spinning. An optimistic spinner
> will check this flag and yield if set. This essentially makes the
> waiter-spinner jump to the head of the optimistic spinning queue to
> acquire the lock.
> 
> There will be no increase in size for the mutex structure for 64-bit
> architectures. For 32-bit architectures, there will be a size increase
> of 4 bytes.

Alternative might be to use the LSB of mutex::owner, but that's going to
be somewhat icky too.

I'm not sure the 32bit platforms are going to be excited about growing
struct mutex...

Back to linux.kernel | Previous | NextNext in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread


Thread

Re: [PATCH v4 3/3] locking/mutex: Ensure forward progress of  waiter-spinner Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-08-08 19:40 +0200
  Re: [PATCH v4 3/3] locking/mutex: Ensure forward progress of  waiter-spinner Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-08-10 21:20 +0200

csiph-web