Virtualization - Sep 2023 - [PATCH V11 04/17] locking/qspinlock: Improve xchg_tail for number of cpus >= 16k

On 9/10/23 23:09, Guo Ren wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 11, 2023 at 10:35?AM Waiman Long <longman at redhat.com>
wrote:
>>
>> On 9/10/23 04:28, guoren at kernel.org wrote:
>>> From: Guo Ren <guoren at linux.alibaba.com>
>>>
>>> The target of xchg_tail is to write the tail to the lock value, so
>>> adding prefetchw could help the next cmpxchg step, which may
>>> decrease the cmpxchg retry loops of xchg_tail. Some processors may
>>> utilize this feature to give a forward guarantee, e.g., RISC-V
>>> XuanTie processors would block the snoop channel & irq for
several
>>> cycles when prefetch.w instruction (from Zicbop extension) retired,
>>> which guarantees the next cmpxchg succeeds.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Guo Ren <guoren at linux.alibaba.com>
>>> Signed-off-by: Guo Ren <guoren at kernel.org>
>>> ---
>>>    kernel/locking/qspinlock.c | 5 ++++-
>>>    1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>>
>>> diff --git a/kernel/locking/qspinlock.c
b/kernel/locking/qspinlock.c
>>> index d3f99060b60f..96b54e2ade86 100644
>>> --- a/kernel/locking/qspinlock.c
>>> +++ b/kernel/locking/qspinlock.c
>>> @@ -223,7 +223,10 @@ static __always_inline void
clear_pending_set_locked(struct qspinlock *lock)
>>>     */
>>>    static __always_inline u32 xchg_tail(struct qspinlock *lock, u32
tail)
>>>    {
>>> -     u32 old, new, val = atomic_read(&lock->val);
>>> +     u32 old, new, val;
>>> +
>>> +     prefetchw(&lock->val);
>>> +     val = atomic_read(&lock->val);
>>>
>>>        for (;;) {
>>>                new = (val & _Q_LOCKED_PENDING_MASK) | tail;
>> That looks a bit weird. You pre-fetch and then immediately read it. How
>> much performance gain you get by this change alone?
>>
>> Maybe you can define an arch specific primitive that default back to
>> atomic_read() if not defined.
> Thx for the reply. This is a generic optimization point I would like
> to talk about with you.
>
> First, prefetchw() makes cacheline an exclusive state and serves for
> the next cmpxchg loop semantic, which writes the idx_tail part of
> arch_spin_lock. The atomic_read only makes cacheline in the shared
> state, which couldn't give any guarantee for the next cmpxchg loop
> semantic. Micro-architecture could utilize prefetchw() to provide a
> strong forward progress guarantee for the xchg_tail, e.g., the T-HEAD
> XuanTie processor would hold the exclusive cacheline state until the
> next cmpxchg write success.
>
> In the end, Let's go back to the principle: the xchg_tail is an atomic
> swap operation that contains write eventually, so giving a prefetchw()
> at the beginning is acceptable for all architectures..
> ????????????
I did realize afterward that prefetchw gets the cacheline in exclusive 
state. I will suggest you mention that in your commit log as well as 
adding a comment about its purpose in the code.

Thanks,
Longman
>> Cheers,
>> Longman
>>
>