Re: [PATCH 2/2] locking/qrwlock: Reduce cacheline contention for rwlocks used in interrupt context

From: Waiman Long
Date: Wed May 11 2022 - 08:45:07 EST


On 5/11/22 04:30, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 03:21:34PM -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
Even though qrwlock is supposed to be a fair lock, it does allow readers
from interrupt context to spin on the lock until it can acquire it making
it not as fair. This exception was added due to the requirement to allow
recursive read lock in interrupt context. This can also be achieved by
just ignoring the writer waiting bit without spinning on the lock.

By making this change, we make qrwlock a bit more fair and eliminating
the problem of cacheline bouncing for rwlocks that are used heavily in
interrupt context, like the networking stack. This should also reduce
the chance of lock starvation for those interrupt context rwlocks.
diff --git a/kernel/locking/qrwlock.c b/kernel/locking/qrwlock.c
index 2e1600906c9f..d52d13e95600 100644
--- a/kernel/locking/qrwlock.c
+++ b/kernel/locking/qrwlock.c
@@ -18,21 +18,16 @@
* queued_read_lock_slowpath - acquire read lock of a queued rwlock
* @lock: Pointer to queued rwlock structure
*/
-void queued_read_lock_slowpath(struct qrwlock *lock)
+void queued_read_lock_slowpath(struct qrwlock *lock, int cnts)
{
/*
- * Readers come here when they cannot get the lock without waiting
+ * Readers come here when they cannot get the lock without waiting.
+ * Readers in interrupt context can steal the lock immediately
+ * if the writer is just waiting (not holding the lock yet).
*/
- if (unlikely(in_interrupt())) {
- /*
- * Readers in interrupt context will get the lock immediately
- * if the writer is just waiting (not holding the lock yet),
- * so spin with ACQUIRE semantics until the lock is available
- * without waiting in the queue.
- */
- atomic_cond_read_acquire(&lock->cnts, !(VAL & _QW_LOCKED));
+ if (unlikely(!(cnts & _QW_LOCKED) && in_interrupt()))
return;
- }
+
atomic_sub(_QR_BIAS, &lock->cnts);
trace_contention_begin(lock, LCB_F_SPIN | LCB_F_READ);
I'm confused; prior to this change:

CPU0 CPU1

write_lock_irq(&l)
read_lock(&l)
<INRQ>
read_lock(&l)
...

was not deadlock, but now it would AFAICT.

Oh you are right. I missed that scenario in my analysis. My bad.

Please scrap this patch. Patch 1 is just an update to the comment and so is still applicable.

Thanks,
Longman