[tip: core/rcu] srcu: Document polling interfaces for Tree SRCU grace periods

[tip-bot2 for Paul E. McKenney]

The following commit has been merged into the core/rcu branch of tip:

Commit-ID:     ee7f4a87a18cd3bb141b38e2ef0c3e53253cdf63
Gitweb:        https://git.kernel.org/tip/ee7f4a87a18cd3bb141b38e2ef0c3e53253cdf63
Author:        Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxx>
AuthorDate:    Wed, 18 Nov 2020 16:01:32 -08:00
Committer:     Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxx>
CommitterDate: Mon, 04 Jan 2021 13:53:39 -08:00

srcu: Document polling interfaces for Tree SRCU grace periods

This commit adds requirements documentation for the
get_state_synchronize_srcu(), start_poll_synchronize_srcu(), and
poll_state_synchronize_srcu() functions.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/rcu/20201112201547.GF3365678@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
Reported-by: Kent Overstreet <kent.overstreet@xxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Neeraj Upadhyay <neeraju@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
 Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.rst | 18 +++++++++-
 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.rst b/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.rst
index e8c84fc..93a189a 100644
--- a/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.rst
+++ b/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.rst
@@ -2600,6 +2600,24 @@ also includes ``DEFINE_SRCU()``, ``DEFINE_STATIC_SRCU()``, and
 ``init_srcu_struct()`` APIs for defining and initializing
 ``srcu_struct`` structures.
 
+More recently, the SRCU API has added polling interfaces:
+
+#. start_poll_synchronize_srcu() returns a cookie identifying
+   the completion of a future SRCU grace period and ensures
+   that this grace period will be started.
+#. poll_state_synchronize_srcu() returns ``true`` iff the
+   specified cookie corresponds to an already-completed
+   SRCU grace period.
+#. get_state_synchronize_srcu() returns a cookie just like
+   start_poll_synchronize_srcu() does, but differs in that
+   it does nothing to ensure that any future SRCU grace period
+   will be started.
+
+These functions are used to avoid unnecessary SRCU grace periods in
+certain types of buffer-cache algorithms having multi-stage age-out
+mechanisms.  The idea is that by the time the block has aged completely
+from the cache, an SRCU grace period will be very likely to have elapsed.
+
 Tasks RCU
 ~~~~~~~~~