Thanks for this, Paul. Some questions and statements below. Paul E. McKenney wrote: > On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 04:02:37PM +0200, Gleb Natapov wrote: >> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 09:39:03AM -0400, Gregory Haskins wrote: > > [ . . . ] > >>> standard RCU RSCS, which is what SRCU is designed for. So rather than >>> inventing an awkward two-phased stack based solution, it's better to >>> reuse the provided tools, IMO. >>> >>> To flip it around: Is there any reason why an SRCU would not work here, >>> and thus we were forced to use something like the stack-copy approach? >>> >> If SRCU has no disadvantage comparing to RCU why not use it always? :) > > The disadvantages of SRCU compared to RCU include the following: > > 1. SRCU requires that the return value of srcu_read_lock() > be fed into srcu_read_unlock(). This is usually not a problem, > but can be painful if there are multiple levels of function > call separating the two. Right, and this is simple/neat w.r.t. its usage in irq_routing, so no problem there. > > 2. SRCU's grace periods are about 4x slower than those of RCU. > And they also don't scale all that well with extremely large > numbers of CPUs (but this can be fixed when/if it becomes a > real problem). The irq_routing update path is extremely infrequent, so this should not be an issue. > > 3. SRCU's read-side primitives are also significantly slower than > those of RCU. > Are the 10ns vs 45ns numbers that I mentioned in my last reply the proper ballpark? How do these compare to an atomic-op, say an uncontended spinlock on modern hardware? The assumption is that srcu_read_lock() should be significantly cheaper than a read-lock(). If its not, then we might as well use something else, I suppose. But if its not, I guess you probably wouldn't have bothered to invent it in the first place ;) > 4. SRCU does not have a call_srcu(). One could be provided, but > its semantics would be a bit strange due to the need to limit > the number of callbacks, given that general blocking is > permitted in SRCU read-side critical sections. (And it would > take some doing to convince me to supply an SRCU!) This is not an issue in our design. > > 5. The current SRCU has no reasonable way to implement read-side > priority boosting, as there is no record of which task > is read-holding which SRCU. Given the infrequency of the update path, I do not see this as a problem. Kind Regards, -Greg
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