Re: [PATCH -v4 5/8] locking/mutex: Add lock handoff to avoid starvation

From: Waiman Long
Date: Mon Oct 17 2016 - 14:46:10 EST


On 10/07/2016 10:52 AM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
/*
* Actual trylock that will work on any unlocked state.
+ *
+ * When setting the owner field, we must preserve the low flag bits.
+ *
+ * Be careful with @handoff, only set that in a wait-loop (where you set
+ * HANDOFF) to avoid recursive lock attempts.
*/
-static inline bool __mutex_trylock(struct mutex *lock)
+static inline bool __mutex_trylock(struct mutex *lock, const bool handoff)
{
unsigned long owner, curr = (unsigned long)current;

owner = atomic_long_read(&lock->owner);
for (;;) { /* must loop, can race against a flag */
- unsigned long old;
+ unsigned long old, flags = __owner_flags(owner);
+
+ if (__owner_task(owner)) {
+ if (handoff&& unlikely(__owner_task(owner) == current)) {
+ /*
+ * Provide ACQUIRE semantics for the lock-handoff.
+ *
+ * We cannot easily use load-acquire here, since
+ * the actual load is a failed cmpxchg, which
+ * doesn't imply any barriers.
+ *
+ * Also, this is a fairly unlikely scenario, and
+ * this contains the cost.
+ */

I am not so sure about your comment here. I guess you are referring to the atomic_long_cmpxchg_acquire below for the failed cmpxchg. However, it is also possible that the path can be triggered on the first round without cmpxchg. Maybe we can do a load_acquire on the owner again to satisfy this requirement without a smp_mb().

+ smp_mb(); /* ACQUIRE */
+ return true;
+ }

- if (__owner_task(owner))
return false;
+ }

- old = atomic_long_cmpxchg_acquire(&lock->owner, owner,
- curr | __owner_flags(owner));
+ /*
+ * We set the HANDOFF bit, we must make sure it doesn't live
+ * past the point where we acquire it. This would be possible
+ * if we (accidentally) set the bit on an unlocked mutex.
+ */
+ if (handoff)
+ flags&= ~MUTEX_FLAG_HANDOFF;
+
+ old = atomic_long_cmpxchg_acquire(&lock->owner, owner, curr | flags);
if (old == owner)
return true;



Other than that, the code is fine.

Reviewed-by: Waiman Long <Waiman.Long@xxxxxxx>