Re: [PATCH tip/core/rcu 4/5] sys_membarrier: Add expedited option

[Paul E. McKenney]

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 06:01:15PM +0000, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> ----- On Jul 26, 2017, at 11:42 AM, Paul E. McKenney paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 09:46:56AM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> >> On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 10:50:13PM +0000, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> >> > This would implement a MEMBARRIER_CMD_PRIVATE_EXPEDITED (or such) flag
> >> > for expedited process-local effect. This differs from the "SHARED" flag,
> >> > since the SHARED flag affects threads accessing memory mappings shared
> >> > across processes as well.
> >> > 
> >> > I wonder if we could create a MEMBARRIER_CMD_SHARED_EXPEDITED behavior
> >> > by iterating on all memory mappings mapped into the current process,
> >> > and build a cpumask based on the union of all mm masks encountered ?
> >> > Then we could send the IPI to all cpus belonging to that cpumask. Or
> >> > am I missing something obvious ?
> >> 
> >> I would readily object to such a beast. You far too quickly end up
> >> having to IPI everybody because of some stupid shared map or something
> >> (yes I know, normal DSOs are mapped private).
> > 
> > Agreed, we should keep things simple to start with.  The user can always
> > invoke sys_membarrier() from each process.
> 
> Another alternative for a MEMBARRIER_CMD_SHARED_EXPEDITED would be rate-limiting
> per thread. For instance, we could add a new "ulimit" that would bound the
> number of expedited membarrier per thread that can be done per millisecond,
> and switch to synchronize_sched() whenever a thread goes beyond that limit
> for the rest of the time-slot.
> 
> A RT system that really cares about not having userspace sending IPIs
> to all cpus could set the ulimit value to 0, which would always use
> synchronize_sched().
> 
> Thoughts ?

The patch I posted reverts to synchronize_sched() in kernels booted with
rcupdate.rcu_normal=1.  ;-)

But who is pushing for multiple-process sys_membarrier()?  Everyone I
have talked to is OK with it being local to the current process.

							Thanx, Paul