Critical Sections for userland.

[Attilio Rao]

2007/10/3, Alfred Perlstein <alfred at freebsd.org>:
> * Daniel Eischen <deischen at freebsd.org> [071002 19:46] wrote:
> > On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
> >
> > >Hi guys, we need critical sections for userland here.
> > >
> > >This is basically to avoid a process being switched out while holding
> > >a user level spinlock.
> >
> > Setting the scheduling class to real-time and using SCHED_FIFO
> > and adjusting the thread priority around the lock doesn't work?
>
> Too heavy weight, we want to basically have this sort of code
> in userland:
>
> /* assume single threaded process for now */
> static int is_critical;
>
>
>
> atomic_mutex_lock();  /* implies ++is_critical */
>  ...do stuff...
> atomic_mutex_unlock(); /* implies --is_critical */
>
> We don't want two or more syscalls per lock operation. :)

Basically, preemption in kernelspace is handled by using the
td_critnest counter which should work in this way:
- critical_enter() bumps td_critnest
- if preemption is required or an ipi arrives and the operation is
signalled with the td_owepreempt flag and will be deferred.
- once critical_exit() is called the counter is decreased. If
necessary (checking for td_critnest and td_owepreempt) the preemptive
operation happens instantanely.

It is all very fast and highly scalable as scope of operation is
entirely per-thread so it doesn't require any lock. I think maybe you
should use a very similar scheme to this.

Attilio


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