Here are some use cases received from our Databases(Oracle) group.
Aim is to use user interrupts as one mechanism, for fast IPC and to signal
target thread blocked in the kernel in a system call.
i.e replace use of signals with user interrupts.
Following enhancements with respect to sharing UITT table will be beneficial.
Oracle DB creates large number of multithreaded processes. A thread in a
process may need to communicate(using user interrupts) with another
thread in any other process. Current proposal of receiver sending an FD
per vector to each of the sender will be an overhead. Also every sender
process/thread allocating a sender table for storing same receiver UPIDs
will be duplication resulting in wasted memory.
> In addition to the current FD based registration approach, having a way
for a group of DB processes to share a sender(UITT) table and allowing
each of the receiver threads to directly register itself in the shared UITT
table, will be efficient. For this the receiver need not create an fd. The
receiver’s UPID index in UITT got from the registration will be shared
with all senders via shared memory(IPC).
DB maintains a process table of all the DB processes/threads in the shared
memory. The receiver can register itself in the shared UITT table and store
its UPID index in the process table. Sender will lookup target process from
the process table to get the UITT index and send the user interrupt.