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From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
To: Matthew Wilcox <matthew@wil.cx>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>,
	"J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@citi.umich.edu>,
	"Zhang, Yanmin" <yanmin_zhang@linux.intel.com>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Alexander Viro <viro@ftp.linux.org.uk>,
	linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: AIM7 40% regression with 2.6.26-rc1
Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 09:55:18 -0700 (PDT)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0805070948250.3024@woody.linux-foundation.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20080507163811.GY19219@parisc-linux.org>



On Wed, 7 May 2008, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> 
> If heavily contended, it could do this.

It doesn' have to be heavily contended - if it's just hot and a bit lucky, 
it would potentially never schedule at all, because it would never take 
the spinlock and serialize the callers.

It doesn't even need "unfairness" to work that way. The old semaphore 
implementation was very much designed to be lock-free, and if you had one 
CPU doing a lock while another did an unlock, the *common* situation was 
that the unlock would succeed first, because the unlocker was also the 
person who had the spinlock exclusively in its cache!

The above may count as "lucky", but the hot-cache-line thing is a big 
deal. It likely "lucky" into something that isn't a 50:50 chance, but 
something that is quite possible to trigger consistently if you just have 
mostly short holders of the lock.

Which, btw, is probably true. The BKL is normally held for short times, 
and released (by that thread) for relatively much longer times. Which 
is when spinlocks tend to work the best, even when they are fair (because 
it's not so much a fairness issue, it's simply a cost-of-taking-the-lock 
issue!)

			Linus

  reply	other threads:[~2008-05-07 16:56 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 140+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2008-05-06  5:48 AIM7 40% regression with 2.6.26-rc1 Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-06 11:18 ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-06 11:44 ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-06 12:09   ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-06 16:23     ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-06 16:36       ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-06 16:42         ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-06 16:39           ` Alan Cox
2008-05-06 16:51             ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-06 16:45               ` Alan Cox
2008-05-06 17:42               ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-06 20:28           ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-06 16:44         ` J. Bruce Fields
2008-05-06 17:21       ` Andrew Morton
2008-05-06 17:31         ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-06 17:49           ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-06 18:07             ` Andrew Morton
2008-05-11 11:11               ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-06 17:39         ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07  6:49           ` Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-06 17:45         ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 16:38         ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-07 16:55           ` Linus Torvalds [this message]
2008-05-07 17:08             ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 17:16               ` Andrew Morton
2008-05-07 17:27                 ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 17:22               ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07 17:25                 ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07 17:31                 ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 17:47                   ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 17:49                   ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07 18:02                     ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 18:17                       ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07 18:27                         ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 18:43                           ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07 19:01                             ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 19:09                               ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07 19:24                               ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-07 19:44                                 ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 20:00                                   ` Oi. NFS people. Read this Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-07 22:10                                     ` Trond Myklebust
2008-05-09  1:43                                       ` J. Bruce Fields
2008-05-08  3:24       ` AIM7 40% regression with 2.6.26-rc1 Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-08  3:34         ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-08  4:37           ` Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-08 14:58             ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07  2:11   ` Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-07  3:41     ` Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-07  3:59       ` Andrew Morton
2008-05-07  4:46         ` Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-07  6:26       ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07  6:28         ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07  7:05           ` Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-07 11:00       ` Andi Kleen
2008-05-07 11:46         ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-07 12:21           ` Andi Kleen
2008-05-07 14:36             ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 14:35               ` Alan Cox
2008-05-07 15:00                 ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 15:02                   ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 14:57               ` Andi Kleen
2008-05-07 15:31                 ` Andrew Morton
2008-05-07 16:22                   ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-07 15:19               ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 17:14                 ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08  2:44                 ` Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-08  3:29                   ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-08  4:08                     ` Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-08  4:17                       ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-08 12:01                         ` [patch] speed up / fix the new generic semaphore code (fix AIM7 40% regression with 2.6.26-rc1) Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08 12:28                           ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08 14:43                             ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08 15:10                               ` [git pull] scheduler fixes Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08 15:33                                 ` Adrian Bunk
2008-05-08 15:41                                   ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08 19:42                                     ` Adrian Bunk
2008-05-11 11:03                                 ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-11 11:14                                   ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-11 11:48                                   ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-11 12:50                                     ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-11 12:52                                       ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-11 13:02                                         ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-11 13:26                                           ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-11 14:00                                             ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-11 14:18                                               ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-11 14:42                                                 ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-11 14:48                                                   ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-11 15:19                                                     ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-11 15:29                                                       ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-13 14:11                                                         ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-13 14:21                                                           ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-13 14:42                                                             ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-13 15:28                                                               ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-13 17:13                                                                 ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-13 17:22                                                                   ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-13 21:05                                                                     ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-11 13:54                                           ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-11 14:22                                             ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-11 14:32                                               ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-11 14:46                                                 ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-11 16:47                                                 ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-11 13:01                                   ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-11 13:06                                     ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-11 13:45                                       ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-11 14:10                                   ` Sven Wegener
2008-05-08 16:02                             ` [patch] speed up / fix the new generic semaphore code (fix AIM7 40% regression with 2.6.26-rc1) Linus Torvalds
2008-05-08 18:30                               ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-08 20:19                                 ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08 20:27                                   ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-08 21:45                                     ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08 22:02                                       ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08 22:55                                       ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-08 23:07                                         ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-08 23:14                                           ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-08 23:16                                         ` Alan Cox
2008-05-08 23:33                                           ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-08 23:27                                             ` Alan Cox
2008-05-09  6:50                                             ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-09  8:29                                             ` Andi Kleen
2008-05-08 13:20                           ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-08 15:01                             ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08 13:56                           ` Arjan van de Ven
2008-05-08  6:43                   ` AIM7 40% regression with 2.6.26-rc1 Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08  6:48                     ` Andrew Morton
2008-05-08  7:14                     ` Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-08  7:39                       ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08  8:44                         ` Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-08  9:21                           ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08  9:29                             ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-08  9:30                             ` Zhang, Yanmin
2008-05-07 16:20               ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07 16:35                 ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 17:05                   ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07 17:24                     ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 17:36                       ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07 17:55                         ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 17:59                           ` Matthew Wilcox
2008-05-07 18:17                             ` Linus Torvalds
2008-05-07 18:49                               ` Ingo Molnar
2008-05-07 13:59         ` Alan Cox

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