Re: [patch] preempt-smp.patch, 2.6.9-rc1-bk14

[Zwane Mwaikambo <zwane@linuxpower.ca>]

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Ingo Molnar wrote:

> to solve this problem i've introduced a new spinlock field,
> lock->break_lock, which signals towards the holding CPU that a
> spinlock-break is requested by another CPU. This field is only set if a
> CPU is spinning in a spinlock function [at any locking depth], so the
> default overhead is zero. I've extended cond_resched_lock() to check for
> this flag - in this case we can also save a reschedule. I've added the
> lock_need_resched(lock) and need_lockbreak(lock) methods to check for
> the need to break out of a critical section.

Doesn't having break_lock within the same cacheline as lock bounce the 
line around more?

> In addition to the preemption latency problems, the _irq() variants in
> the above list didnt do any IRQ-enabling while spinning - possibly
> resulting in excessive irqs-off sections of code!

I had a patch for this 
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0405.3/0578.html and it has 
been running for about 3 months now on a heavily used 4 processor box. 
It's all a matter of whether Andrew is feeling brave ;)

Thanks,
	Zwane