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Date:   Mon, 30 Oct 2023 13:11:41 -0700
From:   "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@kernel.org>
To:     Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc:     Frederic Weisbecker <frederic@kernel.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>,
        Joel Fernandes <joel@joelfernandes.org>,
        Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>,
        Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>,
        Neeraj Upadhyay <neeraj.upadhyay@amd.com>,
        Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>,
        Uladzislau Rezki <urezki@gmail.com>, rcu <rcu@vger.kernel.org>,
        Zqiang <qiang.zhang1211@gmail.com>,
        "Liam R . Howlett" <Liam.Howlett@oracle.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/4] rcu/tasks: Handle new PF_IDLE semantics
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On Mon, Oct 30, 2023 at 09:21:38AM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 04:41:30PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:46:28AM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> 
> > > Nah, this is more or less what I feared. I just worry people will come
> > > around and put WRITE_ONCE() on the other end. I don't think that'll buy
> > > us much. Nor do I think the current READ_ONCE()s actually matter.
> > 
> > My friend, you trust compilers more than I ever will.  ;-)
> 
> Well, we only use the values {0,1,2}, that's contained in the first
> byte. Are we saying compiler will not only byte-split but also
> bit-split the loads?
> 
> But again, lacking the WRITE_ONCE() counterpart, this READ_ONCE() isn't
> getting you anything, and if you really worried about it, shouldn't you
> have proposed a patch making it all WRITE_ONCE() back when you did this
> tasks-rcu stuff?

There are not all that many of them.  If such a WRITE_ONCE() patch would
be welcome, I would be happy to put it together.

> > > But perhaps put a comment there, that we don't care for the races and
> > > only need to observe a 0 once or something.
> > 
> > There are these two passagers in the big lock comment preceding the
> > RCU Tasks code:
> 
> > // rcu_tasks_pregp_step():
> > //      Invokes synchronize_rcu() in order to wait for all in-flight
> > //      t->on_rq and t->nvcsw transitions to complete.  This works because
> > //      all such transitions are carried out with interrupts disabled.
> 
> > Does that suffice, or should we add more?
> 
> Probably sufficient. If one were to have used the search option :-)
> 
> Anyway, this brings me to nvcsw, exact same problem there, except
> possibly worse, because now we actually do care about the full word.
> 
> No WRITE_ONCE() write side, so the READ_ONCE() don't help against
> store-tearing (however unlikely that actually is in this case).

Again, if such a WRITE_ONCE() patch would be welcome, I would be happy
to put it together.

> Also, I'm not entirely sure I see why you need on_rq and nvcsw. Would
> not nvcsw increasing be enough to know it passed through a quiescent
> state? Are you trying to say that if nvcsw hasn't advanced but on_rq is
> still 0, nothing has changed and you can proceed?
> 
> Or rather, looking at the code it seems use the inverse, if on_rq, nvcsw
> must change.
> 
> Makes sense I suppose, no point waiting for nvcsw to change if the task
> never did anything.

Exactly, the on_rq check is needed to avoid excessively long grace
periods for tasks that are blocked for long periods of time.

							Thanx, Paul