Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755985AbaGVS2Y (ORCPT ); Tue, 22 Jul 2014 14:28:24 -0400 Received: from g2t2353.austin.hp.com ([15.217.128.52]:42178 "EHLO g2t2353.austin.hp.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751081AbaGVS2X (ORCPT ); Tue, 22 Jul 2014 14:28:23 -0400 Message-ID: <53CEAD41.9030307@hp.com> Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 14:28:17 -0400 From: Waiman Long User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.12) Gecko/20130109 Thunderbird/10.0.12 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Andi Kleen CC: Thomas Gleixner , Ingo Molnar , Peter Zijlstra , Darren Hart , Davidlohr Bueso , Heiko Carstens , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-api@vger.kernel.org, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, Jason Low , Scott J Norton Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/5] futex: introduce an optimistic spinning futex References: <1405956271-34339-1-git-send-email-Waiman.Long@hp.com> <8761iq3bp3.fsf@tassilo.jf.intel.com> In-Reply-To: <8761iq3bp3.fsf@tassilo.jf.intel.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 07/21/2014 12:42 PM, Andi Kleen wrote: > Waiman Long writes: > >> This patch series introduces two new futex command codes to support >> a new optimistic spinning futex for implementing an exclusive lock >> primitive that should perform better than the same primitive using >> the wait-wake futex in cases where the lock owner is actively working >> instead of waiting for I/O completion. > How would you distinguish those two cases automatically? I don't really distinguish between these two. The purpose of this paragraph is to show the best use cases for the spinning futexes is when the lock owner is not likely to sleep while in the critical section. >> This patch series improves futex performance on two different fronts: >> 1) Reducing the amount of the futex spinlock contention by using 2 >> different spinlocks instead of just one for the wait-wake futex. >> 2) Eliminating the context switching overhead and latency due to the >> sleeping and the waking of the waiting tasks. > FWIW the main problem is currently that switch-through-idle is so > slow. I think improving that would give a boost to far more > situations. If we can improve the context switching overhead, that can certainly help a lot of applications. > >> Patch 4 changes sleeping queue from a simple FIFO list to an rbtree >> sorted by process priority as well as the sequeunce the tasks enter >> the kernel. > This seems to mix new functionality with performance improvements? > > Generally adding new ordering in an user interface is risky because > often user programs have been tuned for specific old ordering. Not really, this patch is to emulate the current behavior of the wait-wake futex which is queued in a priority queue. Because of spinning, tasks may enter into sleep state in different order than when they enter into the kernel. That is why I keep a sequence number to track who go into the kernel first. -Longman -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/