On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Jamie Lokier wrote:
>
> >Note: In many cases, spinlock_irqsave doesn't need to do the
> >spinlock_depth thing on UP. [..]
>
> It doesn't need that in SMP either.
>
> >[..] However, not all cases: the code in the
> >lock region might wake up another task.
>
> If you wakeup another task you don't risk to get rescheduled before you
> drop the lock.
What Jamie is referring to is:
spin_lock_irqsave(a); /* No-op - no counter increment */
spin_lock(b); /* count = 1 */
wakeup_other_task()
spin_lock_irqsave(runqueue_list); /* no-op */
.. wakeup, current->need_resched = 1;
spin_unlock_irqsave(runqueue_list); /* no-op */
spin_unlock(b); /* Decrement, count = 0; !!!! BOOM !!!!! */
spin_unlock_irqrestore(b);
so IF you check for "needs_resched" after a spin_unlock(), then you can't
do the simple and efficient optimization I was talking about, because the
counters are not really precise - they rely on interrupts not happening.
Problems like this is why I'm a big believer in NOT overdesigning things.
Keep it simple and STUPID, and you'll live a healthy long life. And let's
not mess with SMP.
Linus
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Mar 15 2000 - 21:00:26 EST