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Thomas Gleixner ee1ee6db07 atomics: Provide rcuref - scalable reference counting
atomic_t based reference counting, including refcount_t, uses
atomic_inc_not_zero() for acquiring a reference. atomic_inc_not_zero() is
implemented with a atomic_try_cmpxchg() loop. High contention of the
reference count leads to retry loops and scales badly. There is nothing to
improve on this implementation as the semantics have to be preserved.

Provide rcuref as a scalable alternative solution which is suitable for RCU
managed objects. Similar to refcount_t it comes with overflow and underflow
detection and mitigation.

rcuref treats the underlying atomic_t as an unsigned integer and partitions
this space into zones:

  0x00000000 - 0x7FFFFFFF	valid zone (1 .. (INT_MAX + 1) references)
  0x80000000 - 0xBFFFFFFF	saturation zone
  0xC0000000 - 0xFFFFFFFE	dead zone
  0xFFFFFFFF   			no reference

rcuref_get() unconditionally increments the reference count with
atomic_add_negative_relaxed(). rcuref_put() unconditionally decrements the
reference count with atomic_add_negative_release().

This unconditional increment avoids the inc_not_zero() problem, but
requires a more complex implementation on the put() side when the count
drops from 0 to -1.

When this transition is detected then it is attempted to mark the reference
count dead, by setting it to the midpoint of the dead zone with a single
atomic_cmpxchg_release() operation. This operation can fail due to a
concurrent rcuref_get() elevating the reference count from -1 to 0 again.

If the unconditional increment in rcuref_get() hits a reference count which
is marked dead (or saturated) it will detect it after the fact and bring
back the reference count to the midpoint of the respective zone. The zones
provide enough tolerance which makes it practically impossible to escape
from a zone.

The racy implementation of rcuref_put() requires to protect rcuref_put()
against a grace period ending in order to prevent a subtle use after
free. As RCU is the only mechanism which allows to protect against that, it
is not possible to fully replace the atomic_inc_not_zero() based
implementation of refcount_t with this scheme.

The final drop is slightly more expensive than the atomic_dec_return()
counterpart, but that's not the case which this is optimized for. The
optimization is on the high frequeunt get()/put() pairs and their
scalability.

The performance of an uncontended rcuref_get()/put() pair where the put()
is not dropping the last reference is still on par with the plain atomic
operations, while at the same time providing overflow and underflow
detection and mitigation.

The performance of rcuref compared to plain atomic_inc_not_zero() and
atomic_dec_return() based reference counting under contention:

 -  Micro benchmark: All CPUs running a increment/decrement loop on an
    elevated reference count, which means the 0 to -1 transition never
    happens.

    The performance gain depends on microarchitecture and the number of
    CPUs and has been observed in the range of 1.3X to 4.7X

 - Conversion of dst_entry::__refcnt to rcuref and testing with the
    localhost memtier/memcached benchmark. That benchmark shows the
    reference count contention prominently.

    The performance gain depends on microarchitecture and the number of
    CPUs and has been observed in the range of 1.1X to 2.6X over the
    previous fix for the false sharing issue vs. struct
    dst_entry::__refcnt.

    When memtier is run over a real 1Gb network connection, there is a
    small gain on top of the false sharing fix. The two changes combined
    result in a 2%-5% total gain for that networked test.

Reported-by: Wangyang Guo <wangyang.guo@intel.com>
Reported-by: Arjan Van De Ven <arjan.van.de.ven@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230323102800.158429195@linutronix.de
2023-03-28 10:39:29 +02:00
Documentation A small set of updates for x86: 2023-03-05 11:27:48 -08:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add the copyleft-next-0.3.1 license 2022-11-08 15:44:01 +01:00
arch cpumask: re-introduce constant-sized cpumask optimizations 2023-03-05 14:30:34 -08:00
block block-6.3-2023-03-03 2023-03-03 10:21:39 -08:00
certs Kbuild updates for v6.3 2023-02-26 11:53:25 -08:00
crypto Networking changes for 6.3. 2023-02-21 18:24:12 -08:00
drivers This push fixes a regression in the caam driver. 2023-03-05 11:32:30 -08:00
fs 17 hotfixes. Eight are for MM and seven are for other parts of the 2023-03-04 13:32:50 -08:00
include atomics: Provide rcuref - scalable reference counting 2023-03-28 10:39:29 +02:00
init Kbuild updates for v6.3 2023-02-26 11:53:25 -08:00
io_uring io_uring-6.3-2023-03-03 2023-03-03 10:25:29 -08:00
ipc Merge branch 'work.namespace' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2023-02-24 19:20:07 -08:00
kernel A set of updates for the interrupt susbsystem: 2023-03-05 11:19:16 -08:00
lib atomics: Provide rcuref - scalable reference counting 2023-03-28 10:39:29 +02:00
mm mm: avoid gcc complaint about pointer casting 2023-03-04 14:03:27 -08:00
net nfsd-6.3 fixes: 2023-03-01 11:03:44 -08:00
rust Rust fixes for 6.3-rc1 2023-03-03 14:51:15 -08:00
samples LoongArch changes for v6.3 2023-03-01 09:27:00 -08:00
scripts atomics: Provide atomic_add_negative() variants 2023-03-28 10:39:29 +02:00
security capability: just use a 'u64' instead of a 'u32[2]' array 2023-03-01 10:01:22 -08:00
sound sound fixes for 6.3-rc1 2023-03-04 10:53:59 -08:00
tools Changes in this cycle were: 2023-03-02 09:45:34 -08:00
usr usr/gen_init_cpio.c: remove unnecessary -1 values from int file 2022-10-03 14:21:44 -07:00
virt KVM/riscv changes for 6.3 2023-02-15 12:33:28 -05:00
.clang-format cpumask: re-introduce constant-sized cpumask optimizations 2023-03-05 14:30:34 -08:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore get_maintainer: add Alan to .get_maintainer.ignore 2022-08-20 15:17:44 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: use 'dts' diff driver for *.dtso files 2023-02-26 15:28:23 +09:00
.gitignore .gitignore: ignore *.cover and *.mbx 2023-02-05 18:51:22 +09:00
.mailmap mailmap: map Dikshita Agarwal's old address to his current one 2023-03-02 21:54:24 -08:00
.rustfmt.toml rust: add `.rustfmt.toml` 2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS There is no particular theme here - mainly quick hits all over the tree. 2023-02-23 17:55:40 -08:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v6.1 2022-10-10 12:00:45 -07:00
Kconfig kbuild: ensure full rebuild when the compiler is updated 2020-05-12 13:28:33 +09:00
MAINTAINERS Adding Christian Brauner as VFS co-maintainer. 2023-03-05 11:11:52 -08:00
Makefile Linux 6.3-rc1 2023-03-05 14:52:03 -08:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

README

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.