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authorPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com>2006-10-04 02:17:02 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org>2006-10-04 07:55:30 -0700
commit621934ee7ed5b073c7fd638b347e632c53572761 (patch)
tree5722f9cda22c099ad60545f963410dcbc762ee65 /Documentation/RCU/rcu.txt
parent95d77884c77beed676036d2f74d10b470a483c63 (diff)
[PATCH] srcu-3: RCU variant permitting read-side blocking
Updated patch adding a variant of RCU that permits sleeping in read-side critical sections. SRCU is as follows: o Each use of SRCU creates its own srcu_struct, and each srcu_struct has its own set of grace periods. This is critical, as it prevents one subsystem with a blocking reader from holding up SRCU grace periods for other subsystems. o The SRCU primitives (srcu_read_lock(), srcu_read_unlock(), and synchronize_srcu()) all take a pointer to a srcu_struct. o The SRCU primitives must be called from process context. o srcu_read_lock() returns an int that must be passed to the matching srcu_read_unlock(). Realtime RCU avoids the need for this by storing the state in the task struct, but SRCU needs to allow a given code path to pass through multiple SRCU domains -- storing state in the task struct would therefore require either arbitrary space in the task struct or arbitrary limits on SRCU nesting. So I kicked the state-storage problem up to the caller. Of course, it is not permitted to call synchronize_srcu() while in an SRCU read-side critical section. o There is no call_srcu(). It would not be hard to implement one, but it seems like too easy a way to OOM the system. (Hey, we have enough trouble with call_rcu(), which does -not- permit readers to sleep!!!) So, if you want it, please tell me why... [josht@us.ibm.com: sparse notation] Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Josh Triplett <josh@freedesktop.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/RCU/rcu.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/RCU/rcu.txt3
1 files changed, 2 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/rcu.txt b/Documentation/RCU/rcu.txt
index 02e27bf1d36..f84407cba81 100644
--- a/Documentation/RCU/rcu.txt
+++ b/Documentation/RCU/rcu.txt
@@ -45,7 +45,8 @@ o How can I see where RCU is currently used in the Linux kernel?
Search for "rcu_read_lock", "rcu_read_unlock", "call_rcu",
"rcu_read_lock_bh", "rcu_read_unlock_bh", "call_rcu_bh",
- "synchronize_rcu", and "synchronize_net".
+ "srcu_read_lock", "srcu_read_unlock", "synchronize_rcu",
+ "synchronize_net", and "synchronize_srcu".
o What guidelines should I follow when writing code that uses RCU?