Re: [PATCH v2] mm: vmalloc: Replace purge_lock spinlock with atomic refcount

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 03:42:42 -0700
Joel Fernandes <joelaf@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> The purge_lock spinlock causes high latencies with non RT kernel. This has been
> reported multiple times on lkml [1] [2] and affects applications like audio.
> 
> In this patch, I replace the spinlock with an atomic refcount so that
> preemption is kept turned on during purge. This Ok to do since [3] builds the
> lazy free list in advance and atomically retrieves the list so any instance of
> purge will have its own list it is purging. Since the individual vmap area
> frees are themselves protected by a lock, this is Ok.

This is a good idea, and good results, but that's not what the spinlock was
for -- it was for enforcing the sync semantics.

Going this route, you'll have to audit callers to expect changed behavior
and change documentation of sync parameter.

I suspect a better approach would be to instead use a mutex for this, and
require that all sync=1 callers be able to sleep. I would say that most
probably already can.

Thanks,
Nick
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-rt-users" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html



[Index of Archives]     [RT Stable]     [Kernel Newbies]     [IDE]     [Security]     [Git]     [Netfilter]     [Bugtraq]     [Yosemite]     [Yosemite News]     [MIPS Linux]     [ARM Linux]     [Linux Security]     [Linux RAID]     [Linux ATA RAID]     [Samba]     [Video 4 Linux]     [Device Mapper]

  Powered by Linux