<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
<title>linux.git/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements, branch v4.20</title>
<subtitle>Linux kernel source tree</subtitle>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/'/>
<entry>
<title>Merge branches 'doc.2018.08.30a', 'dynticks.2018.08.30b', 'srcu.2018.08.30b' and 'torture.2018.08.29a' into HEAD</title>
<updated>2018-08-30T23:12:53+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Paul E. McKenney</name>
<email>paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2018-08-30T23:12:53+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=b56ada120921fbb0a4fb2a5bee163717182e7e9e'/>
<id>b56ada120921fbb0a4fb2a5bee163717182e7e9e</id>
<content type='text'>
doc.2018.08.30a: Documentation updates
dynticks.2018.08.30b: RCU flavor consolidation updates and cleanups
srcu.2018.08.30b: SRCU updates
torture.2018.08.29a: Torture-test updates
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
doc.2018.08.30a: Documentation updates
dynticks.2018.08.30b: RCU flavor consolidation updates and cleanups
srcu.2018.08.30b: SRCU updates
torture.2018.08.29a: Torture-test updates
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>rcu: Defer reporting RCU-preempt quiescent states when disabled</title>
<updated>2018-08-30T23:02:34+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Paul E. McKenney</name>
<email>paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2018-06-21T19:50:01+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=3e31009898699dfca823893054748d85048dc7b3'/>
<id>3e31009898699dfca823893054748d85048dc7b3</id>
<content type='text'>
This commit defers reporting of RCU-preempt quiescent states at
rcu_read_unlock_special() time when any of interrupts, softirq, or
preemption are disabled.  These deferred quiescent states are reported
at a later RCU_SOFTIRQ, context switch, idle entry, or CPU-hotplug
offline operation.  Of course, if another RCU read-side critical
section has started in the meantime, the reporting of the quiescent
state will be further deferred.

This also means that disabling preemption, interrupts, and/or
softirqs will act as an RCU-preempt read-side critical section.
This is enforced by checking preempt_count() as needed.

Some special cases must be handled on an ad-hoc basis, for example,
context switch is a quiescent state even though both the scheduler and
do_exit() disable preemption.  In these cases, additional calls to
rcu_preempt_deferred_qs() override the preemption disabling.  Similar
logic overrides disabled interrupts in rcu_preempt_check_callbacks()
because in this case the quiescent state happened just before the
corresponding scheduling-clock interrupt.

In theory, this change lifts a long-standing restriction that required
that if interrupts were disabled across a call to rcu_read_unlock()
that the matching rcu_read_lock() also be contained within that
interrupts-disabled region of code.  Because the reporting of the
corresponding RCU-preempt quiescent state is now deferred until
after interrupts have been enabled, it is no longer possible for this
situation to result in deadlocks involving the scheduler's runqueue and
priority-inheritance locks.  This may allow some code simplification that
might reduce interrupt latency a bit.  Unfortunately, in practice this
would also defer deboosting a low-priority task that had been subjected
to RCU priority boosting, so real-time-response considerations might
well force this restriction to remain in place.

Because RCU-preempt grace periods are now blocked not only by RCU
read-side critical sections, but also by disabling of interrupts,
preemption, and softirqs, it will be possible to eliminate RCU-bh and
RCU-sched in favor of RCU-preempt in CONFIG_PREEMPT=y kernels.  This may
require some additional plumbing to provide the network denial-of-service
guarantees that have been traditionally provided by RCU-bh.  Once these
are in place, CONFIG_PREEMPT=n kernels will be able to fold RCU-bh
into RCU-sched.  This would mean that all kernels would have but
one flavor of RCU, which would open the door to significant code
cleanup.

Moving to a single flavor of RCU would also have the beneficial effect
of reducing the NOCB kthreads by at least a factor of two.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
[ paulmck: Apply rcu_read_unlock_special() preempt_count() feedback
  from Joel Fernandes. ]
[ paulmck: Adjust rcu_eqs_enter() call to rcu_preempt_deferred_qs() in
  response to bug reports from kbuild test robot. ]
[ paulmck: Fix bug located by kbuild test robot involving recursion
  via rcu_preempt_deferred_qs(). ]
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
This commit defers reporting of RCU-preempt quiescent states at
rcu_read_unlock_special() time when any of interrupts, softirq, or
preemption are disabled.  These deferred quiescent states are reported
at a later RCU_SOFTIRQ, context switch, idle entry, or CPU-hotplug
offline operation.  Of course, if another RCU read-side critical
section has started in the meantime, the reporting of the quiescent
state will be further deferred.

This also means that disabling preemption, interrupts, and/or
softirqs will act as an RCU-preempt read-side critical section.
This is enforced by checking preempt_count() as needed.

Some special cases must be handled on an ad-hoc basis, for example,
context switch is a quiescent state even though both the scheduler and
do_exit() disable preemption.  In these cases, additional calls to
rcu_preempt_deferred_qs() override the preemption disabling.  Similar
logic overrides disabled interrupts in rcu_preempt_check_callbacks()
because in this case the quiescent state happened just before the
corresponding scheduling-clock interrupt.

In theory, this change lifts a long-standing restriction that required
that if interrupts were disabled across a call to rcu_read_unlock()
that the matching rcu_read_lock() also be contained within that
interrupts-disabled region of code.  Because the reporting of the
corresponding RCU-preempt quiescent state is now deferred until
after interrupts have been enabled, it is no longer possible for this
situation to result in deadlocks involving the scheduler's runqueue and
priority-inheritance locks.  This may allow some code simplification that
might reduce interrupt latency a bit.  Unfortunately, in practice this
would also defer deboosting a low-priority task that had been subjected
to RCU priority boosting, so real-time-response considerations might
well force this restriction to remain in place.

Because RCU-preempt grace periods are now blocked not only by RCU
read-side critical sections, but also by disabling of interrupts,
preemption, and softirqs, it will be possible to eliminate RCU-bh and
RCU-sched in favor of RCU-preempt in CONFIG_PREEMPT=y kernels.  This may
require some additional plumbing to provide the network denial-of-service
guarantees that have been traditionally provided by RCU-bh.  Once these
are in place, CONFIG_PREEMPT=n kernels will be able to fold RCU-bh
into RCU-sched.  This would mean that all kernels would have but
one flavor of RCU, which would open the door to significant code
cleanup.

Moving to a single flavor of RCU would also have the beneficial effect
of reducing the NOCB kthreads by at least a factor of two.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
[ paulmck: Apply rcu_read_unlock_special() preempt_count() feedback
  from Joel Fernandes. ]
[ paulmck: Adjust rcu_eqs_enter() call to rcu_preempt_deferred_qs() in
  response to bug reports from kbuild test robot. ]
[ paulmck: Fix bug located by kbuild test robot involving recursion
  via rcu_preempt_deferred_qs(). ]
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>doc: Update removal of RCU-bh/sched update machinery</title>
<updated>2018-08-30T17:59:48+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Paul E. McKenney</name>
<email>paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2018-07-02T15:25:57+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=77095901b895a64b6d775879b54c73472ba21e68'/>
<id>77095901b895a64b6d775879b54c73472ba21e68</id>
<content type='text'>
The RCU-bh update API is now defined in terms of that of RCU-bh and
RCU-sched, so this commit updates the documentation accordingly.

In addition, although RCU-sched persists in !PREEMPT kernels, in
the PREEMPT case its update API is now defined in terms of that of
RCU-preempt, so this commit also updates the documentation accordingly.

While in the area, this commit removes the documentation for the
now-obsolete synchronize_rcu_mult() and clarifies the Tasks RCU
documentation.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
The RCU-bh update API is now defined in terms of that of RCU-bh and
RCU-sched, so this commit updates the documentation accordingly.

In addition, although RCU-sched persists in !PREEMPT kernels, in
the PREEMPT case its update API is now defined in terms of that of
RCU-preempt, so this commit also updates the documentation accordingly.

While in the area, this commit removes the documentation for the
now-obsolete synchronize_rcu_mult() and clarifies the Tasks RCU
documentation.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>doc: Fix broken RCU-requirements link to LKML archive</title>
<updated>2018-08-29T15:54:30+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Joel Fernandes (Google)</name>
<email>joel@joelfernandes.org</email>
</author>
<published>2018-06-23T04:40:55+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=a5a2889544997d3909480d6d27e2559875226532'/>
<id>a5a2889544997d3909480d6d27e2559875226532</id>
<content type='text'>
Two of the Requirements.html LKML links are broken. This patch changes
them to use the archive from lore.kernel.org, which works fine.

Signed-off-by: Joel Fernandes (Google) &lt;joel@joelfernandes.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Two of the Requirements.html LKML links are broken. This patch changes
them to use the archive from lore.kernel.org, which works fine.

Signed-off-by: Joel Fernandes (Google) &lt;joel@joelfernandes.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>doc: Add design documentation on interruption of NMI handlers</title>
<updated>2018-08-29T15:54:14+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Paul E. McKenney</name>
<email>paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2018-06-22T13:22:20+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=e77cb32558a7bd0e996b7e203158a7fbf1a663fb'/>
<id>e77cb32558a7bd0e996b7e203158a7fbf1a663fb</id>
<content type='text'>
Make Requirements.html talk about how NMI handlers can take what appear
to RCU to be normal interrupts.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Make Requirements.html talk about how NMI handlers can take what appear
to RCU to be normal interrupts.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Merge branches 'cond_resched.2017.12.04a', 'dyntick.2017.11.28a', 'fixes.2017.12.11a', 'srbd.2017.12.05a' and 'torture.2017.12.11a' into HEAD</title>
<updated>2017-12-11T17:21:58+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Paul E. McKenney</name>
<email>paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2017-12-11T17:21:58+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=1dfa55e01987288d847220b8c027204871440ed1'/>
<id>1dfa55e01987288d847220b8c027204871440ed1</id>
<content type='text'>
cond_resched.2017.12.04a: Convert cond_resched_rcu_qs() to cond_resched()
dyntick.2017.11.28a: Make RCU dynticks handle interrupts from NMI
fixes.2017.12.11a: Miscellaneous fixes
srbd.2017.12.05a: Remove now-redundant smp_read_barrier_depends()
torture.2017.12.11a: Torture-testing update
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
cond_resched.2017.12.04a: Convert cond_resched_rcu_qs() to cond_resched()
dyntick.2017.11.28a: Make RCU dynticks handle interrupts from NMI
fixes.2017.12.11a: Miscellaneous fixes
srbd.2017.12.05a: Remove now-redundant smp_read_barrier_depends()
torture.2017.12.11a: Torture-testing update
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>doc: De-emphasize smp_read_barrier_depends</title>
<updated>2017-12-05T19:57:53+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Paul E. McKenney</name>
<email>paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2017-11-27T17:20:40+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=9ad3c143d7d6942c66f27bc6c18f5df638f70aff'/>
<id>9ad3c143d7d6942c66f27bc6c18f5df638f70aff</id>
<content type='text'>
This commit keeps only the historical and low-level discussion of
smp_read_barrier_depends().

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
[ paulmck: Adjusted to allow for David Howells feedback on prior commit. ]
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
This commit keeps only the historical and low-level discussion of
smp_read_barrier_depends().

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
[ paulmck: Adjusted to allow for David Howells feedback on prior commit. ]
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>doc: Eliminate cond_resched_rcu_qs() in favor of cond_resched()</title>
<updated>2017-12-04T18:28:59+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Paul E. McKenney</name>
<email>paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2017-10-24T15:42:41+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=f2b1760aedba1d8394636ba31b9e864e82527528'/>
<id>f2b1760aedba1d8394636ba31b9e864e82527528</id>
<content type='text'>
Now that cond_resched() also provides RCU quiescent states when
needed, it can be used in place of cond_resched_rcu_qs().  This
commit therefore documents this change.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Now that cond_resched() also provides RCU quiescent states when
needed, it can be used in place of cond_resched_rcu_qs().  This
commit therefore documents this change.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>doc: Set down RCU's scheduling-clock-interrupt needs</title>
<updated>2017-08-17T14:31:14+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Paul E. McKenney</name>
<email>paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2017-07-19T16:52:58+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=850bf6d59265a5b868ede7eb6c28cd1ad4640a7e'/>
<id>850bf6d59265a5b868ede7eb6c28cd1ad4640a7e</id>
<content type='text'>
This commit documents the situations in which RCU needs the
scheduling-clock interrupt to be enabled, along with the consequences
of failing to meet RCU's needs in this area.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
This commit documents the situations in which RCU needs the
scheduling-clock interrupt to be enabled, along with the consequences
of failing to meet RCU's needs in this area.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>rcu: Remove debugfs tracing</title>
<updated>2017-06-09T01:52:43+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Paul E. McKenney</name>
<email>paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2017-05-15T22:30:32+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=ae91aa0adb14dc33114d566feca2f7cb7a96b8b7'/>
<id>ae91aa0adb14dc33114d566feca2f7cb7a96b8b7</id>
<content type='text'>
RCU's debugfs tracing used to be the only reasonable low-level debug
information available, but ftrace and event tracing has since surpassed
the RCU debugfs level of usefulness.  This commit therefore removes
RCU's debugfs tracing.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
RCU's debugfs tracing used to be the only reasonable low-level debug
information available, but ftrace and event tracing has since surpassed
the RCU debugfs level of usefulness.  This commit therefore removes
RCU's debugfs tracing.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
</feed>
