Re: Some -serious- BPF-related litmus tests

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Fri, May 29, 2020 at 01:01:51PM -0700, Andrii Nakryiko wrote:

> > question though; why are you using xchg() for the commit? Isn't that
> > more expensive than it should be?
> >
> > That is, why isn't that:
> >
> >   smp_store_release(&hdr->len, new_len);
> >
> > ? Or are you needing the smp_mb() for the store->load ordering for the
> > ->consumer_pos load? That really needs a comment.
> 
> Yeah, smp_store_release() is not strong enough, this memory barrier is
> necessary. And yeah, I'll follow up with some more comments, that's
> been what Joel requested as well.

Ok, great.

> > I think you can get rid of the smp_load_acquire() there, you're ordering
> > a load->store and could rely on the branch to do that:
> >
> >         cons_pos = READ_ONCE(&rb->consumer_pos) & rb->mask;
> >         if ((flags & BPF_RB_FORCE_WAKEUP) || (cons_pos == rec_pos && !(flags &BPF_RB_NO_WAKEUP))
> >                 irq_work_queue(&rq->work);
> >
> > should be a control dependency.
> 
> Could be. I tried to keep consistent
> smp_load_acquire/smp_store_release usage to keep it simpler. It might
> not be the absolutely minimal amount of ordering that would still be
> correct. We might be able to tweak and tune this without changing
> correctness.

We can even rely on the irq_work_queue() being an atomic, but sure, get
it all working and correct first before you wreck it ;-)