Re: [RFT][PATCH] ACPI: OSL: Use rwlock instead of RCU for memory management

[Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>]

On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 7:06 AM Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@rjwysocki.net> wrote:
>
> From: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
> Subject: [PATCH] ACPI: OSL: Use rwlock instead of RCU for memory management
>
> The ACPI OS layer uses RCU to protect the list of ACPI memory
> mappings from being walked while it is updated.  Among other
> situations, that list can be walked in non-NMI interrupt context,
> so using a sleeping lock to protect it is not an option.
>
> However, performance issues related to the RCU usage in there
> appear, as described by Dan Williams:
>
> "Recently a performance problem was reported for a process invoking
> a non-trival ASL program. The method call in this case ends up
> repetitively triggering a call path like:
>
>     acpi_ex_store
>     acpi_ex_store_object_to_node
>     acpi_ex_write_data_to_field
>     acpi_ex_insert_into_field
>     acpi_ex_write_with_update_rule
>     acpi_ex_field_datum_io
>     acpi_ex_access_region
>     acpi_ev_address_space_dispatch
>     acpi_ex_system_memory_space_handler
>     acpi_os_map_cleanup.part.14
>     _synchronize_rcu_expedited.constprop.89
>     schedule
>
> The end result of frequent synchronize_rcu_expedited() invocation is
> tiny sub-millisecond spurts of execution where the scheduler freely
> migrates this apparently sleepy task. The overhead of frequent
> scheduler invocation multiplies the execution time by a factor
> of 2-3X."
>
> In order to avoid these issues, replace the RCU in the ACPI OS
> layer by an rwlock.
>
> That rwlock should not be frequently contended, so the performance
> impact of it is not expected to be significant.
>
> Reported-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
> Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
> ---
>
> Hi Dan,
>
> This is a possible fix for the ACPI OSL RCU-related performance issues, but
> can you please arrange for the testing of it on the affected systems?

Ugh, is it really this simple? I did not realize the read-side is NMI
safe. I'll take a look.