Re: Q: schedule() and implied barriers on arm64

[Paul E. McKenney]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 06:16:08PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 09:04:22AM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 05:18:30PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > IIRC Paul relies on schedule() implying a full memory barrier with
> > > strong transitivity for RCU.
> > > 
> > > If not, ignore this email.
> > 
> > Not so sure about schedule(), but definitely need strong transitivity
> > for the rcu_node structure's ->lock field.  And the atomic operations
> > on the rcu_dyntick structure's fields when entering or leaving the
> > idle loop.
> > 
> > With schedule, the thread later reports the quiescent state, which
> > involves acquiring the rcu_node structure's ->lock field.  So I -think-
> > that the locks in the scheduler can be weakly transitive.
> 
> So I _thought_ you needed this to separate the preempt_disabled
> sections. Such that rcu_note_context_switch() is guaranteed to be done
> before a new preempt_disabled region starts.
> 
> But if you really only need program order guarantees for that, and deal
> with everything else from your tick, then that's fine too.
> 
> Maybe some previous RCU variant relied on this?

Yes, older versions did rely on this.  Now, only the CPU itself observes
RCU's state changes during context switch.  I couldn't tell you exactly
when this changed.  :-/

With the exception of some synchronize_sched_expedited() cases, but in
those cases, RCU code acquires the CPU's leaf rcu_node structure's
->lock, and with the required strong transitivity.

> > > If so, however, I suspect AARGH64 is borken and would need (just like
> > > PPC):
> > > 
> > > #define smp_mb__before_spinlock()	smp_mb()
> > > 
> > > The problem is that schedule() (when a NO-OP) does:
> > > 
> > > 	smp_mb__before_spinlock();
> > > 	LOCK rq->lock
> > > 
> > > 	clear_bit()
> > > 
> > > 	UNLOCK rq->lock
> > > 
> > > And nothing there implies a full barrier on AARGH64, since
> > > smp_mb__before_spinlock() defaults to WMB, LOCK is an "ldaxr" or
> > > load-acquire, UNLOCK is "stlrh" or store-release and clear_bit() isn't
> > > anything.
> > > 
> > > Pretty much every other arch has LOCK implying a full barrier, either
> > > because its strongly ordered or because it needs one for the ACQUIRE
> > > semantics.
> > 
> > But I thought that it used a dmb in the spinlock code somewhere or
> > another...
> 
> arm does, arm64 not so much.
> 
> > Well, arm64 might well need smp_mb__after_unlock_lock() to be non-empty.
> 
> Its UNLOCK+LOCK should be RCsc, so that should be good. Its just that
> LOCK+UNLOCK isn't anything.

Ah!  If RCU relies on LOCK+UNLOCK being a barrier of any sort, that is a
bug in RCU that needs fixing.

							Thanx, Paul

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