Re: [RFC][PATCH 3/4] (Refcount + Waitqueue) implementation for cpu_hotplug "locking"

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>]

* Gautham R Shenoy <ego@in.ibm.com> wrote:

>  void lock_cpu_hotplug(void)
>  {

> +	DECLARE_WAITQUEUE(wait, current);
> +	spin_lock(&cpu_hotplug.lock);
> +	cpu_hotplug.reader_count++;

this should be per-CPU - lock_cpu_hotplug() should _not_ be a globally 
synchronized event.

CPU removal is such a rare event that we can easily do something like a 
global read-mostly 'CPU is locked for writes' flag (plus a completion 
queue) that the 'write' side takes atomically - combined with per-CPU 
refcount and a waitqueue that the read side increases/decreases and 
wakes. Read-locking of the CPU is much more common and should be 
fundamentally scalable: it should increase the per-CPU refcount, then 
check the global 'writer active' flag, and if the writer flag is set, it 
should wait on the global completion queue. When a reader drops the 
refcount it should wake up the per-CPU waitqueue. [in which a writer 
might be waiting for the refcount to go down to 0.]

	Ingo