Title: SRCU: a case study in memory ordering
Description:
Memory ordering guarantees are the backbone of SRCU, an important RCU synchronization mechanism in the kernel. Can we use the Linux kernel memory model to understand complex concurrent code better?
In this talk, we will go over:
- SRCU internals overview and why it works
- in detail, all the 8 or so memory barriers in SRCU and why they are needed.
- comparable access patterns to each barrier (LB, MP etc)
- Linux kernel memory model (LKMM) experiments on studying effects of each memory barrier, along with execution candidate graphs generated by herd7.
- possible formal methods / models.
- discuss both correctness and forward progress issues tackled by these memory barriers
