tree 356c8098f7f706a0e0396476fb5ccb924568eea1
parent 2dcb22b346be7b7b7e630a8970d69cf3f1111ec1
author Manfred Spraul <manfred@colorfullife.com> 1274910220 -0700
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> 1274976769 -0700

ipc/sem.c: optimize update_queue() for bulk wakeup calls

The following series of patches tries to fix the spinlock contention
reported by Chris Mason - his benchmark exposes problems of the current
code:

- In the worst case, the algorithm used by update_queue() is O(N^2).
  Bulk wake-up calls can enter this worst case.  The patch series fix
  that.

  Note that the benchmark app doesn't expose the problem, it just should
  be fixed: Real world apps might do the wake-ups in another order than
  perfect FIFO.

- The part of the code that runs within the semaphore array spinlock is
  significantly larger than necessary.

  The patch series fixes that.  This change is responsible for the main
  improvement.

- The cacheline with the spinlock is also used for a variable that is
  read in the hot path (sem_base) and for a variable that is unnecessarily
  written to multiple times (sem_otime).  The last step of the series
  cacheline-aligns the spinlock.

This patch:

The SysV semaphore code allows to perform multiple operations on all
semaphores in the array as atomic operations.  After a modification,
update_queue() checks which of the waiting tasks can complete.

The algorithm that is used to identify the tasks is O(N^2) in the worst
case.  For some cases, it is simple to avoid the O(N^2).

The patch adds a detection logic for some cases, especially for the case
of an array where all sleeping tasks are single sembuf operations and a
multi-sembuf operation is used to wake up multiple tasks.

A big database application uses that approach.

The patch fixes wakeup due to semctl(,,SETALL,) - the initial version of
the patch breaks that.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: make do_smart_update() static]
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>