Re: [patch 0/8] mutex subsystem, ANNOUNCE

[Nick Piggin]

Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> > It would be nice to first do a run with a fair implementation of 
> > mutexes.
>
>
> which fairness implementation do you mean - the one where all tasks will 
> get the lock in fair FIFO order, and a 'lucky bastard' cannot steal the 
> lock from waiters and thus put them at an indefinite disadvantage?

I guess so. I'm not so worried about the rare 'lucky bastard' ie. a
lock request coming in concurrently, but rather the naturally favoured
'this CPU' taking the lock again after waking up the head waiter but
before it gets a chance to run / transfer the cacheline.

At the very least, the head waiter should not put itself on the end of
the FIFO when it finds the lock contended and waits again.

But yes, also interesting would be performance of the _completely_ FIFO
implementation.

--
SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.

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