Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sat, 22 Mar 2003 22:28:29 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sat, 22 Mar 2003 22:28:29 -0500 Received: from rth.ninka.net ([216.101.162.244]:43929 "EHLO rth.ninka.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sat, 22 Mar 2003 22:28:28 -0500 Subject: Re: smp overhead, and rwlocks considered harmful From: "David S. Miller" To: Andrew Morton Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: <20030322175816.225a1f23.akpm@digeo.com> References: <20030322175816.225a1f23.akpm@digeo.com> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Message-Id: <1048390771.20776.5.camel@rth.ninka.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.2.2 (1.2.2-4) Date: 22 Mar 2003 19:39:31 -0800 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 795 Lines: 17 On Sat, 2003-03-22 at 17:58, Andrew Morton wrote: > I've always been a bit skeptical about rwlocks - if you're holding the lock > for long enough for a significant amount of reader concurrency, you're > holding it for too long. eg: tasklist_lock. I totally agree with you Andrew, on modern SMP systems rwlocks are basically worthless. I think we should kill them off and convert all instances to spinlocks or some better primitive (perhaps a more generalized big reader lock, Roman Zippel had something...) -- David S. Miller - 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/