Is MTX_CONTESTED evil?
John Baldwin
jhb at FreeBSD.org
Mon Mar 22 14:40:56 PST 2004
On Monday 22 March 2004 01:57 am, Seigo Tanimura wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 10:09:48 -0500,
> John Baldwin <john at baldwin.cx> said:
>
> john> On Tuesday 16 March 2004 12:19 am, Seigo Tanimura wrote:
> >> _mtx_unlock_sleep() currently wakes up only one thread being blocked,
> >> and leaves MTX_CONTESTED on a mutex. According to Solaris Internals,
> >> that strategy adds an overhead to check for MTX_CONTESTED on a mutex,
> >> even though it is not held by any thread. The thread waken up cannot
> >> grab the mutex immediately by _obtain_lock() and have to go through
> >> _mtx_lock_sleep(). The penalty tends to be large for a mutex with a
> >> high contention, and we have at least one of such a mutex - Giant.
> >>
> >> What would it be like if we axed MTX_CONTEST and let
> >> _mtx_unlock_sleep() wake up all of the blocked threads?
>
> john> We wouldn't be able to axe MTX_CONTEST. We also use it to determine
> on unlock john> if we can unlock easily or if we have waiters that we need
> to awake. The john> only way we might be able to axe MTX_CONTEST would be
> to penalize every john> unlock operation requiring a turnstile lookup (spin
> lock acquire/release + john> hash table lookup) even unlocks of an
> uncontested mutex. However, what I john> think you want to do is get rid
> of the mtx_lock == MTX_CONTESTED case and use john> turnstile_wakeup()
> rather than turnstile_signal()? Is that what you are
>
> Yes. What I an wondering is whether the reduction of the cost due to
> a mutex with waiters and no holders can beat the cost of waking up all
> the waiters on the turnstile.
>
>
> john> asking? That is something we can try at some point in the future,
> but we john> would need to benchmark both ways. What we might can do is
> add a kernel john> option MUTEX_WAKE_ALL or some such that uses the Solaris
> behavior. Having it john> be an option like ADAPTIVE_MUTEXES makes it
> easier to benchmark both cases.
>
>
> On the detection of the waiters by MTX_CONTEST, maybe we can test
> MTX_CONTEST on mtx_lock before performing _release_lock(). If the
> test succeeds, _mtx_unlock_sleep() must be called and we do not need
> to perform an atomic test-and-set. A race can occur if the mutex is
> locked after the MTX_CONTEST test, but _release_lock() should then
> cover the case.
>
> Pseudocode:
>
> mtx_unlock(m)
> {
> if (m->mtx_lock & MTX_CONTEST || !_release_lock(m))
> _mtx_unlock_sleep(m);
> }
I would just always do the atomic op to avoid penalizing the common fast case
(not contested, not recursed). BTW, last week I did implement the
MUTEX_WAKE_ALL kernel option in the jhb_lock p4 branch. I've been very busy
with work stuff though for several days now, but when I get some free time
again I'll post the patch so people can play with it.
--
John Baldwin <jhb at FreeBSD.org> <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve" = http://www.FreeBSD.org
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