Fwd: [RESEND RFC PATCH 0/3] Provide fast access to thread specific data

[Peter Oskolkov]

On Wed, Sep 8, 2021 at 5:16 PM Prakash Sangappa
<prakash.sangappa@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Including liunx-kernel..
>
> Resending RFC. This patchset is not final. I am looking for feedback on
> this proposal to share thread specific data for us in latency sensitive
> codepath.

Hi Prakash,

I'd like to add here that Jann and I have been discussing a similar
feature for my UMCG patchset:

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAG48ez0mgCXpXnqAUsa0TcFBPjrid-74Gj=xG8HZqj2n+OPoKw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/

In short, due to the need to read/write to the userspace from
non-sleepable contexts in the kernel it seems that we need to have some
form of per task/thread kernel/userspace shared memory that is pinned,
similar to what your sys_task_getshared does.

Do you think your sys_task_getshared can be tweaked to return an
arbitrarily-sized block of memory (subject to overall constraints)
rather than a fixed number of "options"?

On a more general note, we have a kernel extension internally at
Google, named "kuchannel", that is similar to what you propose here:
per task/thread shared memory with counters and other stat fields that
the kernel populates and the userspace reads (and some additional
functionality that is not too relevant to the discussion).

Thanks,
Peter

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