Re: [RESEND PATCH 1/5] lib/dlock-list: Distributed and lock-protected lists

[Waiman Long]

On 06/07/2016 04:13 PM, Andi Kleen wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 07, 2016 at 03:35:51PM -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
> > Linked list is used everywhere in the Linux kernel. However, if many
> > threads are trying to add or delete entries into the same linked list,
> > it can create a performance bottleneck.
> >
> > This patch introduces a new list APIs that provide a set of distributed
> > lists (one per CPU), each of which is protected by its own spinlock.
> One thing I don't like is that it is per CPU. One per CPU is almost
> certainly overkill and not needed for true scalability, especially
> on systems using SMT. Also it makes the case where everything has to
> be walked more and more expensive, because all these locks have to
> be taken. Even when not contended this will add up.

When iterating the lists, the lock shouldn't be taken when a list is empty.

> It would be better to do this per every Nth CPU. Now I don't have
> a clear answer what the best N is, but I'm pretty sure it's>  1.
> For example at least on SMT systems only per core instead of per
> thread. Likely even more coarse grained, although per socket
> may be not good enough.
>
> -Andi

I have just sent out an updated patch to mapped 2 cores to each list. 
Maybe you can take a look to see if that is good enough from your point 
of view.

Cheers,
Longman