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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/percpu-rw-semaphore.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/percpu-rw-semaphore.txt | 27 |
1 files changed, 27 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/percpu-rw-semaphore.txt b/Documentation/percpu-rw-semaphore.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..7d3c82431909 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/percpu-rw-semaphore.txt @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +Percpu rw semaphores +-------------------- + +Percpu rw semaphores is a new read-write semaphore design that is +optimized for locking for reading. + +The problem with traditional read-write semaphores is that when multiple +cores take the lock for reading, the cache line containing the semaphore +is bouncing between L1 caches of the cores, causing performance +degradation. + +Locking for reading is very fast, it uses RCU and it avoids any atomic +instruction in the lock and unlock path. On the other hand, locking for +writing is very expensive, it calls synchronize_rcu() that can take +hundreds of milliseconds. + +The lock is declared with "struct percpu_rw_semaphore" type. +The lock is initialized percpu_init_rwsem, it returns 0 on success and +-ENOMEM on allocation failure. +The lock must be freed with percpu_free_rwsem to avoid memory leak. + +The lock is locked for read with percpu_down_read, percpu_up_read and +for write with percpu_down_write, percpu_up_write. + +The idea of using RCU for optimized rw-lock was introduced by +Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>. +The code was written by Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com> |