[PATCH 0/2] srcu-3: add RCU variant that permits read-side blocking

From: Paul E. McKenney
Date: Thu Jul 06 2006 - 14:34:22 EST


Version 3 of the SRCU patchset.

This patch incorporates a number of improvements, many of which came
up in off-list discussions with Alan Stern. Neither of us are sure
why these discussions ended up off-list, so I have summarized them
below.

o Fixes some "zombie code" -- excess curly braces and the like.

o Gets rid of the double-flip in favor of an additional
synchronize_sched(). This turned out to be safe, despite
my saying otherwise at http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/6/27/486.
The trick that I was missing is that synchronize_sched()
forces all CPUs to execute at least one memory barrier during
the synchronize_sched()'s execution, which forces all CPUs
to see synchronize_srcu()'s counter increment as happening
after any memory manipulations prior to the synchronize_srcu().

Upgraded comments to indicate what the synchronize_sched()
calls are needed for.

o Added a barrier() to both srcu_read_lock() and srcu_read_unlock()
to prevent the compiler from performing optimizations that
would cause the critical section to move outside of the
enclosing srcu_read_lock() and srcu_read_unlock().

However, these barrier()s in srcu_read_lock() and srcu_read_unlock()
are needed only in non-CONFIG_PREEMPT kernels, so they compile
to nothing in CONFIG_PREEMPT kernels (where the preempt_disable()
and preempt_enable() calls supply the needed barrier() call).

o Added a check to synchronize_srcu() that permits this primitive
to take advantage of grace periods induced by concurrent executions
in other tasks. This can be useful in cases where you are
using a single srcu_struct to handle all the individually-locked
chains of a hash table, for example.

o cleanup_srcu_struct() now contains error checks to catch cases
where readers are still using the srcu_struct in question.
It does a WARN_ON() and leaks the srcu_struct's per-CPU data
in that case.

o There is an srcu_readers_active() that returns the number of
readers (approximate!) currently using the specified srcu_struct.
This can be useful when terminating use of an srcu_struct, e.g.,
at module-unload time.

o Improved the RCU torture tests, increasing the skew on reader
times and providing implementation-specific delay functions.
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