This is a small fallout from a work to allow batching WW mutex locks and unlocks. Our Wound-Wait mutexes actually don't use the Wound-Wait algorithm but the Wait-Die algorithm. One could perhaps rename those mutexes tree-wide to "Wait-Die mutexes" or "Deadlock Avoidance mutexes". Another approach suggested here is to implement also the "Wound-Wait" algorithm as a per-WW-class choice, as it has advantages in some cases. See for example http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~cheung/Courses/554/Syllabus/8-recv+serial/deadlock-compare.html Now Wound-Wait is a preemptive algorithm, and the preemption is implemented using a lazy scheme: If a wounded transaction is about to go to sleep on a contended WW mutex, we return -EDEADLK. That is sufficient for deadlock prevention. Since with WW mutexes we also require the aborted transaction to sleep waiting to lock the WW mutex it was aborted on, this choice also provides a suitable WW mutex to sleep on. If we were to return -EDEADLK on the first WW mutex lock after the transaction was wounded whether the WW mutex was contended or not, the transaction might frequently be restarted without a wait, which is far from optimal. Note also that with the lazy preemption scheme, contrary to Wait-Die there will be no rollbacks on lock contention of locks held by a transaction that has completed its locking sequence. The modeset locks are then changed from Wait-Die to Wound-Wait since the typical locking pattern of those locks very well matches the criterion for a substantial reduction in the number of rollbacks. For reservation objects, the benefit is more unclear at this point and they remain using Wait-Die. Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@xxxxxxx> Cc: Gustavo Padovan <gustavo@xxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Maarten Lankhorst <maarten.lankhorst@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Sean Paul <seanpaul@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: David Airlie <airlied@xxxxxxxx> Cc: Davidlohr Bueso <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Josh Triplett <josh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Kate Stewart <kstewart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Philippe Ombredanne <pombredanne@xxxxxxxx> Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: linux-doc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: linux-media@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: linaro-mm-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx v2: Updated DEFINE_WW_CLASS() API, minor code- and comment fixes as detailed in each patch. v3: Included cleanup patch from Peter Zijlstra. Documentation fixes and a small correctness fix. v4: Reworked the correctness fix.