From: Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@gmail.com>
To: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org,
mingo@kernel.org, will.deacon@arm.com, peterz@infradead.org,
boqun.feng@gmail.com, npiggin@gmail.com, dhowells@redhat.com,
j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk, luc.maranget@inria.fr, akiyks@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC LKMM 1/7] tools/memory-model: Add extra ordering for locks and remove it for ordinary release/acquire
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2018 11:17:18 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20180831091641.GA3634@andrea> (raw)
Message-ID: <20180831091718.HkiRo3k3xgexSVlltirgcT3ZO5jaOMtfBRy6uFmG0Ho@z> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44L0.1808301712230.31183-100000@netrider.rowland.org>
On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 05:31:32PM -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Aug 2018, Andrea Parri wrote:
>
> > > All the architectures supported by the Linux kernel (including RISC-V)
> > > do provide this ordering for locks, albeit for varying reasons.
> > > Therefore this patch changes the model in accordance with the
> > > developers' wishes.
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
> > > Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
> > > Reviewed-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
> > > Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
> >
> > Round 2 ;-), I guess... Let me start from the uncontroversial points:
> >
> > 1) being able to use the LKMM to reason about generic locking code
> > is useful and desirable (paraphrasing Peter in [1]);
> >
> > 2) strengthening the ordering requirements of such code isn't going
> > to boost performance (that's "real maths").
> >
> > This patch is taking (1) away from us and it is formalizing (2), with
> > almost _no_ reason (no reason at all, if we stick to the commit msg.).
>
> That's not quite fair. Generic code isn't always universally
> applicable; some of it is opt-in -- meant only for the architectures
> that can support it. In general, the LKMM allows us to reason about
> higher abstractions (such as locking) at a higher level, without
> necessarily being able to verify the architecture-specific details of
> the implementations.
No, generic code is "universally applicable" by definition; see below
for more on this point.
>
> > In [2], Will wrote:
> >
> > "[...] having them [the RMWs] closer to RCsc[/to the semantics of
> > locks] would make it easier to implement and reason about generic
> > locking implementations (i.e. reduce the number of special ordering
> > cases and/or magic barrier macros)"
> >
> > "magic barrier macros" as in "mmh, if we accept this patch, we _should_
> > be auditing the various implementations/code to decide where to place a
> >
> > smp_barrier_promote_ordinary_release_acquire_to_unlock_lock()" ;-)
> >
> > or the like, and "special ordering cases" as in "arrgh, (otherwise) we
> > are forced to reason on a per-arch basis while looking at generic code".
>
> Currently the LKMM does not permit architecture-specific reasoning. It
> would have to be extended (in a different way for each architecture)
> first.
Completely agreed; that's why I said that this patch is detrimental to
the applicability of the LKMM...
>
> For example, one could use herd's POWER model combined with the POWER
> compilation scheme and the POWER-specific implementation of spinlocks
> for such reasoning. The LKMM alone is not sufficient.
>
> Sure, programming and reasoning about the kernel would be easier if all
> architectures were the same. Unfortunately, we (and the kernel) have
> to live in the real world.
>
> > (Remark: ordinary release/acquire are building blocks for code such as
> > qspinlock, (q)rwlock, mutex, rwsem, ... and what else??).
>
> But are these building blocks used the same way for all architectures?
The more, the better! (because then we have the LKMM tools)
We already discussed the "fast path" example: the fast paths of the
above all resemble:
*_lock(s): atomic_cmpxchg_acquire(&s->val, UNLOCKED_VAL, LOCKED_VAL) ...
*_unlock(s): ... atomic_set_release(&s->val, UNLOCKED_VAL)
When I read this code, I think "Of course." (unless some arch. has
messed the implementation of cmpxchg_* up, which can happen...); but
then I read the subject line of this patch and I think "Wait, what?".
You can argue that this is not generic code, sure; but why on Earth
would you like to do so?!
Andrea
>
> > To avoid further repetition, I conclude by confirming all the concerns
> > and my assessment of this patch as pointed out in [3]; the subsequent
> > discussion, although not conclusive, presented several suggestions for
> > improvement (IMO).
>
> Alan
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-08-31 13:24 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 112+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-08-29 21:10 [PATCH RFC memory-model 0/7] Memory-model changes Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` [PATCH RFC LKMM 1/7] tools/memory-model: Add extra ordering for locks and remove it for ordinary release/acquire Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-30 12:50 ` Andrea Parri
2018-08-30 12:50 ` Andrea Parri
2018-08-30 21:31 ` Alan Stern
2018-08-30 21:31 ` Alan Stern
2018-08-31 9:17 ` Andrea Parri [this message]
2018-08-31 9:17 ` Andrea Parri
2018-08-31 14:52 ` Alan Stern
2018-08-31 14:52 ` Alan Stern
2018-08-31 16:06 ` Will Deacon
2018-08-31 16:06 ` Will Deacon
2018-08-31 18:28 ` Andrea Parri
2018-08-31 18:28 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-03 9:01 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-03 9:01 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-03 17:04 ` Will Deacon
2018-09-03 17:04 ` Will Deacon
2018-09-04 8:11 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-04 8:11 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-04 19:09 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-04 19:09 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-05 7:21 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-05 7:21 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-05 14:33 ` Akira Yokosawa
2018-09-05 14:33 ` Akira Yokosawa
2018-09-05 14:53 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-05 14:53 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-05 15:00 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-05 15:00 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-05 15:04 ` Akira Yokosawa
2018-09-05 15:04 ` Akira Yokosawa
2018-09-05 15:24 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-05 15:24 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-03 17:52 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-03 17:52 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-03 18:28 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-03 18:28 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-06 1:25 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-06 1:25 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-06 9:36 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-06 9:36 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-07 16:00 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-07 16:00 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-07 16:09 ` Will Deacon
2018-09-07 16:09 ` Will Deacon
2018-09-07 16:39 ` Daniel Lustig
2018-09-07 16:39 ` Daniel Lustig
2018-09-07 17:38 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-07 17:38 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-08 0:04 ` Daniel Lustig
2018-09-08 0:04 ` Daniel Lustig
2018-09-08 9:58 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-08 9:58 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-11 19:31 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-11 19:31 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-11 20:03 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-11 20:03 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-12 14:24 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-12 14:24 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-13 17:07 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-13 17:07 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-14 14:37 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-14 14:37 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-14 16:29 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-14 16:29 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-14 19:44 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-14 19:44 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-14 21:08 ` [PATCH v5] " Alan Stern
2018-09-14 21:08 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-15 3:56 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-15 3:56 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-03 17:05 ` [PATCH RFC LKMM 1/7] " Will Deacon
2018-09-03 17:05 ` Will Deacon
2018-08-31 17:55 ` Andrea Parri
2018-08-31 17:55 ` Andrea Parri
2018-08-29 21:10 ` [PATCH RFC LKMM 2/7] doc: Replace smp_cond_acquire() with smp_cond_load_acquire() Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-14 16:59 ` Will Deacon
2018-09-14 16:59 ` Will Deacon
2018-09-14 18:20 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-14 18:20 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` [PATCH RFC LKMM 3/7] EXP tools/memory-model: Add more LKMM limitations Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-30 9:17 ` Andrea Parri
2018-08-30 9:17 ` Andrea Parri
2018-08-30 22:18 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-30 22:18 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-31 9:43 ` Andrea Parri
2018-08-31 9:43 ` Andrea Parri
2018-09-06 18:34 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-06 18:34 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` [PATCH RFC LKMM 4/7] tools/memory-model: Fix a README typo Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` [PATCH RFC LKMM 5/7] EXP tools/memory-model: Add scripts to check github litmus tests Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` [PATCH RFC LKMM 6/7] EXP tools/memory-model: Make scripts take "-j" abbreviation for "--jobs" Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` [PATCH RFC LKMM 7/7] EXP tools/memory-model: Add .cfg and .cat files for s390 Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-29 21:10 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-08-31 16:06 ` Will Deacon
2018-08-31 16:06 ` Will Deacon
2018-09-01 17:08 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-01 17:08 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-14 16:36 ` [PATCH RFC memory-model 0/7] Memory-model changes Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-14 16:36 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-14 17:19 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-14 17:19 ` Alan Stern
2018-09-14 18:29 ` Paul E. McKenney
2018-09-14 18:29 ` Paul E. McKenney
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