Re: [PATCH] locking/osq: Drop the overload of osq lock

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Sat Jun 25 2016 - 12:15:49 EST


On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 11:21:30PM +0800, Boqun Feng wrote:
> So on PPC, we have lppaca::yield_count to detect when an vcpu is
> preempted, if the yield_count is even, the vcpu is running, otherwise it
> is preempted(__spin_yield() is a user of this).
>
> Therefore it makes more sense we
>
> if (need_resched() || vcpu_is_preempted(old))
>
> here, and implement vcpu_is_preempted() on PPC as
>
> bool vcpu_is_preempted(int cpu)
> {
> return !!(be32_to_cpu(lppaca_of(cpu).yield_count) & 1)
> }
>
> Thoughts?

Would that not have issues where the owner cpu is kept running but the
spinner (ie. _this_ vcpu) gets preempted? I would think that in that
case we too want to stop spinning.

Although, if all vcpus are scheduled equal, it might not matter on
average.