Re: [RESEND PATCH v5] locking/pvqspinlock: Relax cmpxchg's to improve performance on some archs
From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Thu Aug 10 2017 - 12:15:34 EST
On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 09:58:57AM -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
> On 08/10/2017 09:27 AM, Waiman Long wrote:
> > On 08/10/2017 07:50 AM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> >> On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 09:38:28AM -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
> >>> # of thread w/o patch with patch % Change
> >>> ----------- --------- ---------- --------
> >>> 4 4053.3 Mop/s 4223.7 Mop/s +4.2%
> >>> 8 3310.4 Mop/s 3406.0 Mop/s +2.9%
> >>> 12 2576.4 Mop/s 2674.6 Mop/s +3.8%
> >> Waiman, could you run those numbers again but with the below 'fixed' ?
> >>
> >>> @@ -361,6 +361,13 @@ static void pv_kick_node(struct qspinlock *lock, struct mcs_spinlock *node)
> >>> * observe its next->locked value and advance itself.
> >>> *
> >>> * Matches with smp_store_mb() and cmpxchg() in pv_wait_node()
> >>> + *
> >>> + * The write to next->locked in arch_mcs_spin_unlock_contended()
> >>> + * must be ordered before the read of pn->state in the cmpxchg()
> >>> + * below for the code to work correctly. However, this is not
> >>> + * guaranteed on all architectures when the cmpxchg() call fails.
> >>> + * Both x86 and PPC can provide that guarantee, but other
> >>> + * architectures not necessarily.
> >>> */
> >> smp_mb();
> >>
> >>> if (cmpxchg(&pn->state, vcpu_halted, vcpu_hashed) != vcpu_halted)
> >>> return;
> >> Ideally this Power CPU can optimize back-to-back SYNC instructions, but
> >> who knows...
> > Yes, I can run the numbers again. However, the changes here is in the
> > slowpath. My current patch optimizes the fast path only and my original
> > test doesn't stress the slowpath at all, I think. I will have to make
> > some changes to stress the slowpath.
>
> Looking at past emails, I remember why I put the comment there. Putting
> an smp_mb() here will definitely has an negative performance impact on
> x86. So I put in the comment here to remind me that the current code may
> not work for ARM64.
>
> To fix that, my current thought is to have a cmpxchg variant that
> guarantees ordering for both success and failure, for example,
> cmpxchg_ordered(). In that way, we only need to insert the barrier for
> architectures that need it. That will be a separate patch instead of
> integrating into this one.
Might as well do an explicit:
smp_mb__before_atomic()
cmpxchg_relaxed()
smp_mb__after_atomic()
I suppose and not introduce new primitives.