Re: [PATCH 2/2] slub: remove one code path and reduce lock contentionin __slab_free()

From: Pekka Enberg
Date: Fri Oct 19 2012 - 03:20:36 EST


On Thu, 16 Aug 2012, Joonsoo Kim wrote:
> When we try to free object, there is some of case that we need
> to take a node lock. This is the necessary step for preventing a race.
> After taking a lock, then we try to cmpxchg_double_slab().
> But, there is a possible scenario that cmpxchg_double_slab() is failed
> with taking a lock. Following example explains it.
>
> CPU A CPU B
> need lock
> ... need lock
> ... lock!!
> lock..but spin free success
> spin... unlock
> lock!!
> free fail
>
> In this case, retry with taking a lock is occured in CPU A.
> I think that in this case for CPU A,
> "release a lock first, and re-take a lock if necessary" is preferable way.
>
> There are two reasons for this.
>
> First, this makes __slab_free()'s logic somehow simple.
> With this patch, 'was_frozen = 1' is "always" handled without taking a lock.
> So we can remove one code path.
>
> Second, it may reduce lock contention.
> When we do retrying, status of slab is already changed,
> so we don't need a lock anymore in almost every case.
> "release a lock first, and re-take a lock if necessary" policy is
> helpful to this.
>
> Signed-off-by: Joonsoo Kim <js1304@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxx>

Applied, thanks!
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