Re: [RESEND PATCH v5] locking/pvqspinlock: Relax cmpxchg's to improve performance on some archs

From: Waiman Long
Date: Mon Aug 14 2017 - 11:01:16 EST


On 08/14/2017 08:01 AM, Will Deacon wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 11:06:01AM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 02:18:30PM -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
>>> On 08/10/2017 12:22 PM, Waiman Long wrote:
>>>> On 08/10/2017 12:15 PM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>>>>> Might as well do an explicit:
>>>>>
>>>>> smp_mb__before_atomic()
>>>>> cmpxchg_relaxed()
>>>>> smp_mb__after_atomic()
>>>>>
>>>>> I suppose and not introduce new primitives.
>>> I think we don't need smp_mb__after_atomic(). The read has to be fully
>>> ordered, but the write part may not need it as the control dependency of
>>> the old value should guard against incorrect action. Right?
>> You'd think that, but IIRC there was something funny about using the SC
>> return flag for control dependencies. Will?
> Yeah, that's right, you can't use the STXR status flag to create control
> dependencies.
>
> Will

Actually, the code sequence that I plan to use are:

smp_mb__before_atomic();
if (cmpxchg_relaxed(&pn->state, vcpu_halted, vcpu_hashed)
!= vcpu_halted)
return;

WRITE_ONCE(l->locked, _Q_SLOW_VAL);
(void)pv_hash(lock, pn);

I am planning to use the comparison of the returned value (pn->state)
again vcpu_halted as the control dependency. I don't see how the status
flag of STXR is affecting this.

Cheers,
Longman