Re: [PATCH tip/core/rcu 01/40] rcu: Maintain special bits at bottom of ->dynticks counter

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Thu Apr 13 2017 - 05:21:05 EST


On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 10:39:46AM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> Currently, IPIs are used to force other CPUs to invalidate their TLBs
> in response to a kernel virtual-memory mapping change. This works, but
> degrades both battery lifetime (for idle CPUs) and real-time response
> (for nohz_full CPUs), and in addition results in unnecessary IPIs due to
> the fact that CPUs executing in usermode are unaffected by stale kernel
> mappings. It would be better to cause a CPU executing in usermode to
> wait until it is entering kernel mode to do the flush, first to avoid
> interrupting usemode tasks and second to handle multiple flush requests
> with a single flush in the case of a long-running user task.
>
> This commit therefore reserves a bit at the bottom of the ->dynticks
> counter, which is checked upon exit from extended quiescent states.
> If it is set, it is cleared and then a new rcu_eqs_special_exit() macro is
> invoked, which, if not supplied, is an empty single-pass do-while loop.
> If this bottom bit is set on -entry- to an extended quiescent state,
> then a WARN_ON_ONCE() triggers.
>
> This bottom bit may be set using a new rcu_eqs_special_set() function,
> which returns true if the bit was set, or false if the CPU turned
> out to not be in an extended quiescent state. Please note that this
> function refuses to set the bit for a non-nohz_full CPU when that CPU
> is executing in usermode because usermode execution is tracked by RCU
> as a dyntick-idle extended quiescent state only for nohz_full CPUs.
>
> Reported-by: Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Isn't that more a: Requested-by ?