Re: [PATCH v4 3/4] locking/qspinlock: Add ARCH_USE_QUEUED_SPINLOCKS_XCHG32

[Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>]

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021 at 1:36 PM Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 07, 2021 at 10:42:50AM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > Since there are really only a handful of instances in the kernel
> > that use the cmpxchg() or xchg() on u8/u16 variables, it would seem
> > best to just disallow those completely
>
> Not going to happen. xchg16 is optimal for qspinlock and if we replace
> that with a cmpxchg loop on x86 we're regressing.

I did not mean to remove the possibility of doing a 16-bit compare-exchange
operation altogether, just removing it from the regular macros.

We already do this for the 64-bit xchg64()/cmpxchg64(), which only some
of the 32-bit architectures provide, so I think having an explicit
xchg8()/xchg16()/cmpxchg8()/cmpxchg16() interface while tightening the
type checking would be more consistent here.

On any 32-bit architecture, cmpxchg()/xchg() macros then only have
to deal with word-sized operations.

> > Interestingly, the s390 version using __sync_val_compare_and_swap()
> > seems to produce nice output on all architectures that have atomic
> > instructions, with any supported compiler, to the point where I think
> > we could just use that to replace most of the inline-asm versions except
> > for arm64:
> >
> > #define cmpxchg(ptr, o, n)                                              \
> > ({                                                                      \
> >         __typeof__(*(ptr)) __o = (o);                                   \
> >         __typeof__(*(ptr)) __n = (n);                                   \
> >         (__typeof__(*(ptr))) __sync_val_compare_and_swap((ptr),__o,__n);\
> > })
>
> It generates the LL/SC loop, but doesn't do sensible optimizations when
> it's again used in a loop itself. That is, it generates a loop of a
> loop, just like what you'd expect, which is sub-optimal for LL/SC.

One thing that it does though is to generate an ll/sc loop for xchg16(),
while mips, openrisc, xtensa and sparc64 currently open-code the
nested loop in their respective xchg16() wrappers. I have not seen
any case in which it produces object code that is worse than the
architecture specific code does today, except for those that rely on
runtime patching (i486+smp, arm64+lse).

> > Not how gcc's acquire/release behavior of __sync_val_compare_and_swap()
> > relates to what the kernel wants here.
> >
> > The gcc documentation also recommends using the standard
> > __atomic_compare_exchange_n() builtin instead, which would allow
> > constructing release/acquire/relaxed versions as well, but I could not
> > get it to produce equally good output. (possibly I was using it wrong)
>
> I'm scared to death of the C11 crap, the compiler will 'optimize' them
> when it feels like it and use the C11 memory model rules for it, which
> are not compatible with the kernel rules.
>
> But the same thing applies, it won't do the right thing for composites.

Makes sense. As I said, I could not even get it to produce optimal code
for the simple case.

         Arnd