Re: [PATCH v2 0/9] Remove spin_unlock_wait()

[Will Deacon]

On Thu, Jul 06, 2017 at 06:50:36PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 06, 2017 at 09:20:24AM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 06, 2017 at 06:05:55PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jul 06, 2017 at 02:12:24PM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> > > > From: Paul E. McKenney
> > 
> > [ . . . ]
> > 
> > > Now on the one hand I feel like Oleg that it would be a shame to loose
> > > the optimization, OTOH this thing is really really tricky to use,
> > > and has lead to a number of bugs already.
> > 
> > I do agree, it is a bit sad to see these optimizations go.  So, should
> > this make mainline, I will be tagging the commits that spin_unlock_wait()
> > so that they can be easily reverted should someone come up with good
> > semantics and a compelling use case with compelling performance benefits.
> 
> Ha!, but what would constitute 'good semantics' ?
> 
> The current thing is something along the lines of:
> 
>   "Waits for the currently observed critical section
>    to complete with ACQUIRE ordering such that it will observe
>    whatever state was left by said critical section."
> 
> With the 'obvious' benefit of limited interference on those actually
> wanting to acquire the lock, and a shorter wait time on our side too,
> since we only need to wait for completion of the current section, and
> not for however many contender are before us.
> 
> Not sure I have an actual (micro) benchmark that shows a difference
> though.
> 
> 
> 
> Is this all good enough to retain the thing, I dunno. Like I said, I'm
> conflicted on the whole thing. On the one hand its a nice optimization,
> on the other hand I don't want to have to keep fixing these bugs.

As I've said, I'd be keen to see us drop this and bring it back if/when we
get a compelling use-case along with performance numbers. At that point,
we'd be in a better position to define the semantics anyway, knowing what
exactly is expected by the use-case.

Will