Re: [PATCH 6/8] lazy tlb: shoot lazies, a non-refcounting lazy tlb option

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Sun, Nov 29, 2020 at 02:01:39AM +1000, Nicholas Piggin wrote:
> +static void shoot_lazy_tlbs(struct mm_struct *mm)
> +{
> +	if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_MMU_LAZY_TLB_SHOOTDOWN)) {
> +		/*
> +		 * IPI overheads have not found to be expensive, but they could
> +		 * be reduced in a number of possible ways, for example (in
> +		 * roughly increasing order of complexity):
> +		 * - A batch of mms requiring IPIs could be gathered and freed
> +		 *   at once.
> +		 * - CPUs could store their active mm somewhere that can be
> +		 *   remotely checked without a lock, to filter out
> +		 *   false-positives in the cpumask.
> +		 * - After mm_users or mm_count reaches zero, switching away
> +		 *   from the mm could clear mm_cpumask to reduce some IPIs
> +		 *   (some batching or delaying would help).
> +		 * - A delayed freeing and RCU-like quiescing sequence based on
> +		 *   mm switching to avoid IPIs completely.
> +		 */
> +		on_each_cpu_mask(mm_cpumask(mm), do_shoot_lazy_tlb, (void *)mm, 1);
> +		if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_DEBUG_VM))
> +			on_each_cpu(do_check_lazy_tlb, (void *)mm, 1);

So the obvious 'improvement' here would be something like:

	for_each_online_cpu(cpu) {
		p = rcu_dereference(cpu_rq(cpu)->curr;
		if (p->active_mm != mm)
			continue;
		__cpumask_set_cpu(cpu, tmpmask);
	}
	on_each_cpu_mask(tmpmask, ...);

The remote CPU will never switch _to_ @mm, on account of it being quite
dead, but it is quite prone to false negatives.

Consider that __schedule() sets rq->curr *before* context_switch(), this
means we'll see next->active_mm, even though prev->active_mm might still
be our @mm.

Now, because we'll be removing the atomic ops from context_switch()'s
active_mm swizzling, I think we can change this to something like the
below. The hope being that the cost of the new barrier can be offset by
the loss of the atomics.

Hmm ?

diff --git a/kernel/sched/core.c b/kernel/sched/core.c
index 41404afb7f4c..2597c5c0ccb0 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/core.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/core.c
@@ -4509,7 +4509,6 @@ context_switch(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev,
 	if (!next->mm) {                                // to kernel
 		enter_lazy_tlb(prev->active_mm, next);
 
-		next->active_mm = prev->active_mm;
 		if (prev->mm)                           // from user
 			mmgrab(prev->active_mm);
 		else
@@ -4524,6 +4523,7 @@ context_switch(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev,
 		 * case 'prev->active_mm == next->mm' through
 		 * finish_task_switch()'s mmdrop().
 		 */
+		next->active_mm = next->mm;
 		switch_mm_irqs_off(prev->active_mm, next->mm, next);
 
 		if (!prev->mm) {                        // from kernel
@@ -5713,11 +5713,9 @@ static void __sched notrace __schedule(bool preempt)
 
 	if (likely(prev != next)) {
 		rq->nr_switches++;
-		/*
-		 * RCU users of rcu_dereference(rq->curr) may not see
-		 * changes to task_struct made by pick_next_task().
-		 */
-		RCU_INIT_POINTER(rq->curr, next);
+
+		next->active_mm = prev->active_mm;
+		rcu_assign_pointer(rq->curr, next);
 		/*
 		 * The membarrier system call requires each architecture
 		 * to have a full memory barrier after updating