From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail-ed1-f68.google.com ([209.85.208.68]:39039 "EHLO mail-ed1-f68.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1727676AbeINTww (ORCPT ); Fri, 14 Sep 2018 15:52:52 -0400 Received: by mail-ed1-f68.google.com with SMTP id h4-v6so7621498edi.6 for ; Fri, 14 Sep 2018 07:38:03 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2018 16:37:52 +0200 From: Andrea Parri Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC LKMM 1/7] tools/memory-model: Add extra ordering for locks and remove it for ordinary release/acquire Message-ID: <20180914143752.GA7467@andrea> References: <20180911200328.GA4225@linux.vnet.ibm.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-arch-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: To: Alan Stern Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" , Daniel Lustig , Will Deacon , Andrea Parri , Kernel development list , linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, mingo@kernel.org, peterz@infradead.org, boqun.feng@gmail.com, npiggin@gmail.com, dhowells@redhat.com, Jade Alglave , Luc Maranget , akiyks@gmail.com, Palmer Dabbelt , Linus Torvalds Message-ID: <20180914143752.omKy8oHY2zGUaY_zWCpmJlg-NVmToFpKjDub9TxUNbQ@z> On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 01:07:39PM -0400, Alan Stern wrote: > Not having received any responses to the question about usages of RCtso > locks, I have decided to post the newly updated version of the patch > description for commit c8c5779c854f ("tools/memory-model: Add extra > ordering for locks and remove it for ordinary release/acquire") in > Paul's LKMM branch. There are no changes to the patch itself. > > Hopefully this includes all the important issues that people have > raised. (Admittedly, some parts of the discussion have seemed less > consequential than others, and some parts I didn't understand at all.) > > Alan > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > More than one kernel developer has expressed the opinion that the LKMM > should enforce ordering of writes by locking. In other words, given > the following code: > > WRITE_ONCE(x, 1); > spin_unlock(&s): > spin_lock(&s); > WRITE_ONCE(y, 1); > > the stores to x and y should be propagated in order to all other CPUs, > even though those other CPUs might not access the lock s. In terms of > the memory model, this means expanding the cumul-fence relation. > > Locks should also provide read-read (and read-write) ordering in a > similar way. Given: > > READ_ONCE(x); > spin_unlock(&s); > spin_lock(&s); > READ_ONCE(y); // or WRITE_ONCE(y, 1); > > the load of x should be executed before the load of (or store to) y. > The LKMM already provides this ordering, but it provides it even in > the case where the two accesses are separated by a release/acquire > pair of fences rather than unlock/lock. This would prevent > architectures from using weakly ordered implementations of release and > acquire, which seems like an unnecessary restriction. The patch > therefore removes the ordering requirement from the LKMM for that > case. > > There are several arguments both for and against this change. Let us > refer to these enhanced ordering properties by saying that the LKMM > would require locks to be RCtso (a bit of a misnomer, but analogous to > RCpc and RCsc) and it would require ordinary acquire/release only to > be RCpc. (Note: In the following, the phrase "all supported > architectures" does not include RISC-V, which is still somewhat in > a state of flux.) But "all supported architectures" does include RISC-V. > > Pros: > > The kernel already provides RCtso ordering for locks on all > supported architectures, even though this is not stated > explicitly anywhere. Therefore the LKMM should formalize it. > > In theory, guaranteeing RCtso ordering would reduce the need > for additional barrier-like constructs meant to increase the > ordering strength of locks. > > Will Deacon and Peter Zijlstra are strongly in favor of > formalizing the RCtso requirement. Linus Torvalds and Will > would like to go even further, requiring locks to have RCsc > behavior (ordering preceding writes against later reads), but > they recognize that this would incur a noticeable performance > degradation on the POWER architecture. Linus also points out > that people have made the mistake, in the past, of assuming > that locking has stronger ordering properties than is > currently guaranteed, and this change would reduce the > likelihood of such mistakes. Pros for "RCpc-only ordinary (and atomic) acquire/release" should go here. > > Cons: > > Andrea Parri and Luc Maranget feel that locks should have the > same ordering properties as ordinary acquire/release (indeed, > Luc points out that the names "acquire" and "release" derive > from the usage of locks) and that having different ordering > properties for different forms of acquires and releases would > be confusing and unmaintainable. s/unmaintainable/unneeded ("confusing" should already convey the fragility of these changes). >Will and Linus, on the other > hand, feel that architectures should be free to implement > ordinary acquire/release using relatively weak RCpc machine > instructions. Linus points out that locks should be easy for > people to use without worrying about memory consistency > issues, since they are so pervasive in the kernel, whereas > acquire/release is much more of an "expertss only" tool. > > Locks are constructed from lower-level primitives, typically > RMW-acquire (for locking) and ordinary release (for unlock). > It is illogical to require stronger ordering properties from s/It is illogical/It is detrimental to the LKMM's applicability > the high-level operations than from the low-level operations > they comprise. Thus, this change would make > > while (cmpxchg_acquire(&s, 0, 1) != 0) > cpu_relax(); > > an incorrect implementation of spin_lock(&s) ... w.r.t. the LKMM (same for smp_cond_load_acquire). >. In theory this > weakness can be ameliorated by changing the LKMM even further, > requiring RMW-acquire/release also to be RCtso (which it > already is on all supported architectures). > > As far as I know, nobody has singled out any examples of code > in the kernel that actually relies on locks being RCtso. > (People mumble about RCU and the scheduler, but nobody has > pointed to any actual code. If there are any real cases, > their number is likely quite small.) If RCtso ordering is not > needed, why require it? Your patch and Paul said "opinions ranking". Andrea > > A handful of locking constructs (qspinlocks, qrwlocks, and > mcs_spinlocks) are built on top of smp_cond_load_acquire() > instead of an RMW-acquire instruction. It currently provides > only the ordinary acquire semantics, not the stronger ordering > this patch would require of locks. In theory this could be > ameliorated by requiring smp_cond_load_acquire() in > combination with ordinary release also to be RCtso (which is > currently true in all supported architectures). > > On future weakly ordered architectures, people may be able to > implement locks in a non-RCtso fashion with significant > performance improvement. Meeting the RCtso requirement would > necessarily add run-time overhead. > > Overall, the technical aspects of these arguments seem relatively > minor, and it appears mostly to boil down to a matter of opinion. > Since the opinions of long-time kernel developers such as Linus, > Peter, and Will carry more weight than those of Luc and Andrea, this > patch changes the model in accordance with the developers' wishes. > > Signed-off-by: Alan Stern > > --- > > v.4: Added pros and cons discussion to the Changelog. > > v.3: Rebased against the dev branch of Paul's linux-rcu tree. > Changed unlock-rf-lock-po to po-unlock-rf-lock-po, making it more > symmetrical and more in accordance with the use of fence.tso for > the release on RISC-V. > > v.2: Restrict the ordering to lock operations, not general release > and acquire fences. >