Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756701Ab0DEVyV (ORCPT ); Mon, 5 Apr 2010 17:54:21 -0400 Received: from e1.ny.us.ibm.com ([32.97.182.141]:42632 "EHLO e1.ny.us.ibm.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756450Ab0DEVyP (ORCPT ); Mon, 5 Apr 2010 17:54:15 -0400 Message-ID: <4BBA5C00.4090703@us.ibm.com> Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:54:08 -0700 From: Darren Hart User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 (X11/20100317) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Avi Kivity CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Thomas Gleixner , Peter Zijlstra , Ingo Molnar , Eric Dumazet , "Peter W. Morreale" , Rik van Riel , Steven Rostedt , Gregory Haskins , Sven-Thorsten Dietrich , Chris Mason , John Cooper , Chris Wright Subject: Re: [PATCH V2 0/6][RFC] futex: FUTEX_LOCK with optional adaptive spinning References: <1270499039-23728-1-git-send-email-dvhltc@us.ibm.com> <4BBA5305.7010002@redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <4BBA5305.7010002@redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3003 Lines: 71 Avi Kivity wrote: > On 04/05/2010 11:23 PM, Darren Hart wrote: >> In-Reply-To: >> >> NOT FOR INCLUSION >> >> The following patch series implements a new experimental kernel side >> futex mutex >> via new FUTEX_LOCK and FUTEX_LOCK_ADAPTIVE futex op codes. The >> adaptive spin >> follows the kernel mutex model of allowing one spinner until the lock is >> released or the owner is descheduled. The patch currently allows the >> user to >> specify if they want no spinning, a single adaptive spinner, or multiple >> spinners (aggressive adaptive spinning, or aas... which I have >> mistyped as "ass" >> enough times to realize a better term is indeed required :-). >> > > An interesting (but perhaps difficult to achieve) optimization would be > to spin in userspace. I couldn't think of a lightweight way to determine when the owner has been scheduled out in userspace. Kernel assistance is required. You could do this on the schedule() side of things, but I figured I'd get some strong pushback if I tried to add a hook into descheduling that flipped a bit in the futex value stating the owner was about to deschedule(). Still, that might be something to explore. > > How many cores (or hardware threads) does this machine have? Sorry, I meant to include that. I tested on an 8 CPU (no hardware threads) 2.6 GHz Opteron 2218 (2 QuadCore CPUs) system. > At 10% > duty cycle you have 25 waiters behind the lock on average. I don't > think this is realistic, and it means that spinning is invoked only rarely. Perhaps some instrumentation is in order, it seems to get invoked enough to achieve some 20% increase in lock/unlock iterations. Perhaps another metric would be of more value - such as average wait time? > I'd be interested in seeing runs where the average number of waiters is > 0.2, 0.5, 1, and 2, corresponding to moderate-to-bad contention. > 25 average waiters on compute bound code means the application needs to be > rewritten, no amount of mutex tweaking will help it. Perhaps something NR_CPUS threads would be of more interest? At 10% that's about .8 and at 25% the 2 of your upper limit. I could add a few more duty-cycle points and make 25% the max. I'll kick that off and post the results... probably tomorrow, 10M iterations takes a while, but makes the results relatively stable. > Does the wakeup code select the spinning waiter, or just a random waiter? The wakeup code selects the highest priority task in fifo order to wake-up - however, under contention it is most likely going to go back to sleep as another waiter will steal the lock out from under it. This locking strategy is unashamedly about as "unfair" as it gets. -- Darren Hart IBM Linux Technology Center Real-Time Linux Team -- 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/