Re: [PATCH v3 4/8] memcg: replace stats_flush_lock with an atomic

[Shakeel Butt]

On Tue, Apr 4, 2023 at 10:13 AM Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 4, 2023 at 9:53 AM Michal Koutný <mkoutny@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Hello.
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 30, 2023 at 07:17:57PM +0000, Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >  static void __mem_cgroup_flush_stats(void)
> > >  {
> > > -     unsigned long flag;
> > > -
> > > -     if (!spin_trylock_irqsave(&stats_flush_lock, flag))
> > > +     /*
> > > +      * We always flush the entire tree, so concurrent flushers can just
> > > +      * skip. This avoids a thundering herd problem on the rstat global lock
> > > +      * from memcg flushers (e.g. reclaim, refault, etc).
> > > +      */
> > > +     if (atomic_read(&stats_flush_ongoing) ||
> > > +         atomic_xchg(&stats_flush_ongoing, 1))
> > >               return;
> >
> > I'm curious about why this instead of
> >
> >         if (atomic_xchg(&stats_flush_ongoing, 1))
> >                 return;
> >
> > Is that some microarchitectural cleverness?
> >
>
> Yes indeed it is. Basically we want to avoid unconditional cache
> dirtying. This pattern is also used at other places in the kernel like
> qspinlock.

Oh also take a look at
https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230404052228.15788-1-feng.tang@xxxxxxxxx/