Re: [RFC PATCH v2 3/5] futex: Throughput-optimized (TO) futexes

From: Thomas Gleixner
Date: Thu Sep 22 2016 - 09:36:47 EST


On Thu, 22 Sep 2016, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 07:37:34PM -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
> > On 09/21/2016 02:59 AM, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> > >On Tue, 2016-09-20 at 09:42 -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
> > >>This patch introduces a new futex implementation called
> > >>throughput-optimized (TO) futexes.
> > >nit: 'TO' sounds way too much like timeout... TP? You even use 'to' as
> > >shorthand for timeout in the next patch.
> >
> > I agree. I am not that satisfied with the TO name. So I will change it to TP
> > in my next revision of the patch. Thanks for the suggestion.
>
> I'd leave out the TO part entirely (or only mention it in changelogs).
>
> That is, I'd call the futex ops: FUTEX_LOCK and FUTEX_UNLOCK.

That brings me to a different question:

How is user space going to support this, i.e. is this some extra magic for
code which implements its own locking primitives or is there going to be a
wide use via e.g. glibc.

Also what's the reason that we can't do probabilistic spinning for
FUTEX_WAIT and have to add yet another specialized variant of futexes?

Thanks,

tglx