Re: [PATCH] percpu-rwsem: use barrier in unlock path

[Steven Rostedt]

On Thu, 2012-10-18 at 10:18 +0800, Lai Jiangshan wrote:
> > 
> > Looking at the patch, you are correct. The read side doesn't need the
> > memory barrier as the worse thing that will happen is that it sees the
> > locked = false, and will just grab the mutex unnecessarily.
> 
> ---------------------
> A memory barrier can be added iff these two things are known:
> 	1) it disables the disordering between what and what.
> 	2) what is the corresponding mb() that it pairs with.
> 

OK, I was just looking at the protection and actions of the locked flag,
but I see what you are saying with the data itself.

> You tried to add a mb() in percpu_up_write(), OK, I know it disables the disordering
> between the writes to the protected data and the statement "p->locked = false",
> But I can't find out the corresponding mb() that it pairs with.
> 
> percpu_down_read()					writes to the data
> 	The cpu cache/prefetch the data			writes to the data
> 	which is chaos					writes to the data
> 							percpu_up_write()
> 								mb()
> 								p->locked = false;
> 	unlikely(p->locked)
> 		the cpu see p->lock = false,
> 		don't discard the cached/prefetch data
> 	this_cpu_inc(*p->counters);
> 	the code of read-access to the data
> 	****and we use the chaos data*****
> 
> So you need to add a mb() after "unlikely(p->locked)".

Does it need a full mb() or could it be just a rmb()? The down_read I
wouldn't think would need to protect against stores, would it? The
memory barrier should probably go in front of the unlikely() too. The
write to p->counters is handled by the synchronized sched, and adding a
rmb() in front of the unlikely check would keep prefetched data from
passing this barrier.

This is a perfect example why this primitive should be vetted outside of
mainline before it gets merged.

-- Steve


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