ipc/sem.c: update description of the implementation
ipc/sem.c begins with a 15 year old description about bugs in the initial
implementation in Linux-1.0. The patch replaces that with a top level
description of the current code.
A TODO could be derived from this text:
The opengroup man page for semop() does not mandate FIFO. Thus there is
no need for a semaphore array list of pending operations.
If
- this list is removed
- the per-semaphore array spinlock is removed (possible if there is no
list to protect)
- sem_otime is moved into the semaphores and calculated on demand during
semctl()
then the array would be read-mostly - which would significantly improve
scaling for applications that use semaphore arrays with lots of entries.
The price would be expensive semctl() calls:
for(i=0;i<sma->sem_nsems;i++) spin_lock(sma->sem_lock);
<do stuff>
for(i=0;i<sma->sem_nsems;i++) spin_unlock(sma->sem_lock);
I'm not sure if the complexity is worth the effort, thus here is the
documentation of the current behavior first.
Signed-off-by: Manfred Spraul <manfred@colorfullife.com>
Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>
Cc: Zach Brown <zach.brown@oracle.com>
Cc: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
Cc: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
1 file changed