Re: [PATCH 13/13] workqueue: record global worker ID instead of pool ID in work->data when off-queue

[Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>]

Hey, again.

On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 02:41:36AM +0800, Lai Jiangshan wrote:
> Every time, when we need to find the executing worker from work,
> we need 2 steps:
> 	find the pool from the idr by pool id.
> 	find the worker from the hash table of the pool.
> 
> Now we merge them as one step: find the worker directly from the idr by worker gwid.
> (lock_pool_executing_work(). If the work is onq, we still use hash table.)
> 
> It makes the code more straightforward.
> 
> In future, we may add percpu worker gwid <--> worker mapping cache when needed.
> 
> And we are planing to add non-std worker_pool, we still don't know how to
> implement worker_pool_by_id() for non-std worker_pool, this patch solves it.
> 
> This patch slows down the very-slow-path destroy_worker(), if it is blamed,
> we will move the synchronize_rcu() out.
> 
> This patch adds a small overhead(rcu_read_[un]lock) in fast path
> lock_pool_executing_work(). if it is blamed, we will use rcu_sched instead.
> (local_irq_disable() implies rcu_read_lock_sched(), so we can remove
> this overhead.)

So, I've been looking at the last six patches and am not really sure
whether I want this.  At least not in the current form.  We end up
locking, unlocking and then locking again the same thing in hot path.
Having a proper locking API is all nice and good *if* it actually can
support use case at hand.  The proposed one can't.

Also, if worker is RCU protected then pool should be too (otherwise
you can't do worker->pool->lock), so it doesn't really simplify that
aspect either.

I do like work items pointing back to workers instead of pools, so I
think I'll try that differently.

Thanks.

-- 
tejun