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Documentation/locking/mutex-design: Update to reflect latest changes

Commit 3ca0ff571b09 ("locking/mutex: Rework mutex::owner") reworked the
basic mutex implementation to deal with several problems. Documentation
was however left unchanged and became stale.

Update mutex-design.txt to reflect changes introduced by the above commit.

Signed-off-by: Juri Lelli <juri.lelli@redhat.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Davidlohr Bueso <dave@stgolabs.net>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20180209160114.19980-1-juri.lelli@redhat.com
[ Small readability tweaks to the text. ]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Juri Lelli 7 years ago
parent
commit
79e9023826
1 changed files with 17 additions and 32 deletions
  1. 17 32
      Documentation/locking/mutex-design.txt

+ 17 - 32
Documentation/locking/mutex-design.txt

@@ -21,37 +21,23 @@ Implementation
 --------------
 --------------
 
 
 Mutexes are represented by 'struct mutex', defined in include/linux/mutex.h
 Mutexes are represented by 'struct mutex', defined in include/linux/mutex.h
-and implemented in kernel/locking/mutex.c. These locks use a three
-state atomic counter (->count) to represent the different possible
-transitions that can occur during the lifetime of a lock:
-
-	  1: unlocked
-	  0: locked, no waiters
-   negative: locked, with potential waiters
-
-In its most basic form it also includes a wait-queue and a spinlock
-that serializes access to it. CONFIG_SMP systems can also include
-a pointer to the lock task owner (->owner) as well as a spinner MCS
-lock (->osq), both described below in (ii).
+and implemented in kernel/locking/mutex.c. These locks use an atomic variable
+(->owner) to keep track of the lock state during its lifetime.  Field owner
+actually contains 'struct task_struct *' to the current lock owner and it is
+therefore NULL if not currently owned. Since task_struct pointers are aligned
+at at least L1_CACHE_BYTES, low bits (3) are used to store extra state (e.g.,
+if waiter list is non-empty).  In its most basic form it also includes a
+wait-queue and a spinlock that serializes access to it. Furthermore,
+CONFIG_MUTEX_SPIN_ON_OWNER=y systems use a spinner MCS lock (->osq), described
+below in (ii).
 
 
 When acquiring a mutex, there are three possible paths that can be
 When acquiring a mutex, there are three possible paths that can be
 taken, depending on the state of the lock:
 taken, depending on the state of the lock:
 
 
-(i) fastpath: tries to atomically acquire the lock by decrementing the
-    counter. If it was already taken by another task it goes to the next
-    possible path. This logic is architecture specific. On x86-64, the
-    locking fastpath is 2 instructions:
-
-    0000000000000e10 <mutex_lock>:
-    e21:   f0 ff 0b                lock decl (%rbx)
-    e24:   79 08                   jns    e2e <mutex_lock+0x1e>
-
-   the unlocking fastpath is equally tight:
-
-    0000000000000bc0 <mutex_unlock>:
-    bc8:   f0 ff 07                lock incl (%rdi)
-    bcb:   7f 0a                   jg     bd7 <mutex_unlock+0x17>
-
+(i) fastpath: tries to atomically acquire the lock by cmpxchg()ing the owner with
+    the current task. This only works in the uncontended case (cmpxchg() checks
+    against 0UL, so all 3 state bits above have to be 0). If the lock is
+    contended it goes to the next possible path.
 
 
 (ii) midpath: aka optimistic spinning, tries to spin for acquisition
 (ii) midpath: aka optimistic spinning, tries to spin for acquisition
      while the lock owner is running and there are no other tasks ready
      while the lock owner is running and there are no other tasks ready
@@ -143,11 +129,10 @@ Test if the mutex is taken:
 Disadvantages
 Disadvantages
 -------------
 -------------
 
 
-Unlike its original design and purpose, 'struct mutex' is larger than
-most locks in the kernel. E.g: on x86-64 it is 40 bytes, almost twice
-as large as 'struct semaphore' (24 bytes) and tied, along with rwsems,
-for the largest lock in the kernel. Larger structure sizes mean more
-CPU cache and memory footprint.
+Unlike its original design and purpose, 'struct mutex' is among the largest
+locks in the kernel. E.g: on x86-64 it is 32 bytes, where 'struct semaphore'
+is 24 bytes and rw_semaphore is 40 bytes. Larger structure sizes mean more CPU
+cache and memory footprint.
 
 
 When to use mutexes
 When to use mutexes
 -------------------
 -------------------