Re: RCU Kconfig help text

From: Paul E. McKenney
Date: Sun Sep 06 2009 - 02:45:04 EST


On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 08:24:41AM +0200, Pavel Machek wrote:
> On Sat 2009-09-05 13:01:46, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 05, 2009 at 09:27:10AM -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx wrote:
> > > init/Kconfig says:
> > >
> > > "choice
> > > prompt "RCU Implementation"
> > > default TREE_RCU
> > >
> > > config TREE_RCU
> > > bool "Tree-based hierarchical RCU"
> > > help
> > > This option selects the RCU implementation that is
> > > designed for very large SMP system with hundreds or
> > > thousands of CPUs. It also scales down nicely to
> > > smaller systems.
> > >
> > > config TREE_PREEMPT_RCU
> > > bool "Preemptable tree-based hierarchical RCU"
> > > depends on PREEMPT
> > > help
> > > This option selects the RCU implementation that is
> > > designed for very large SMP systems with hundreds or
> > > thousands of CPUs, but for which real-time response
> > > is also required.
> > >
> > > endchoice"
> > >
> > > This leaves somebody who has a laptop wondering which choice is best for
> > > a system with only one or two cores that has CONFIG_PREEMPT defined. One
> > > choice says it scales down nicely, the other explicitly has a 'depends on
> > > PREEMPT' attached to it...
> > >
> > > (Yes, I realize in practice, the RCU sections on a laptop are probably usually
> > > so short they don't matter in practice. I finally concluded TREE_PREEMPT was
> > > apparently a rename of CONFIG_PREEMPT_RCU and went with that since that was
> > > working for me before...)
> >
> > Good point -- I will add the "It also scales down nicely to smaller
> > systems" to TREE_PREEMPT_RCU.
> >
> > For -really- small systems, TINY_RCU will hopefully be there at some
> > point, but it can only handle single-CPU systems.
>
> If so, call it 'UP_RCU' or 'UNIPROCESSOR_RCU'?

"UP_RCU". Cute!!! ;-)

My hope is to drive the RCU selection directly from CONFIG_SMP and
CONFIG_PREEMPT, so that the choice of RCU would be implicit (aside from
things like tracing and fanout).

Seem reasonable, or would you expect anyone to want to hand-select
the RCU implementation?

Thanx, Paul
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