Re: [PATCH RFC 02/12] x86/ticketlock: convert spin loop to C

From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge
Date: Mon Aug 02 2010 - 11:17:59 EST


On 08/02/2010 08:07 AM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
On Fri, 2010-07-16 at 18:03 -0700, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
+ register union {
+ struct __raw_tickets tickets;
+ unsigned short slock;
+ } inc = { .slock = 1<< TICKET_SHIFT };
register arch_spinlock_t inc = { .tickets = { .head = 1, .tail = 0 } };

> From a quick look you can basically replace all TICKET_SHIFT usage (1<<
TICKET_SHIFT) with such a constant.

Mostly. In the later patch to convert trylock in to C, you need it to construct an argument for cmpxchg (which can only take a scalar, even if it does have a struct packed into it).

[ Also, does gcc really listen to the register hint these days? ]

It doesn't make much different in this case. I think the only real effect is that its illegal to take the address of a register variable.

+ asm volatile (LOCK_PREFIX "xaddw %w0, %1\n"
+ : "+Q" (inc), "+m" (lock->slock) : : "memory", "cc");
"+Q" (inc->slock)

+ for (;;) {
+ if (inc.tickets.head == inc.tickets.tail)
+ return;
+ cpu_relax();
+ inc.tickets.head = ACCESS_ONCE(lock->tickets.head);
+ }
+ barrier(); /* make sure nothing creeps before the lock is taken */
}
How will it ever get to that barrier() ?

The compiler treats this as being:

for (;;) {
if (inc.tickets.head == inc.tickets.tail)
goto out;
...
}
out: barrier();
}

(Which would probably be a reasonable way to clarify the code.)

Without the barrier there's a risk of locked-region code being scheduled before the for(;;) loop.

J
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