Re: [Problem] Cache line starvation

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Wed Oct 03 2018 - 04:28:53 EST


On Wed, Oct 03, 2018 at 10:07:05AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Oct 2018, Catalin Marinas wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 21 Sep 2018 at 13:22, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 02:02:26PM +0200, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior wrote:
> > > > We reproducibly observe cache line starvation on a Core2Duo E6850 (2
> > > > cores), a i5-6400 SKL (4 cores) and on a NXP LS2044A ARM Cortex-A72 (4
> > > > cores).

> Except that the ARM64 ticket locks are not preventing the starvation
> issue. Neither do the qrlocks on ARM64 on later kernels.

That A72 is ARMv8-A afaict, that doesn't have the fancy LSE bits (which
are new in ARMv8.1) on and thus ends up using LL/SC. And LL/SC has
similar issues as cmpxchg loops.

AFAICT Cortex-A75 is the first that has LSE on (that's an ARMv8.2-A).