Re: [RFC] Avoid mutex starvation when optimistic spinning is disabled

From: Waiman Long
Date: Fri Jul 22 2016 - 14:01:33 EST


On 07/21/2016 06:29 PM, Jason Low wrote:
On Wed, 2016-07-20 at 14:37 -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
On 07/20/2016 12:39 AM, Jason Low wrote:
On Tue, 2016-07-19 at 16:04 -0700, Jason Low wrote:
Hi Imre,

Here is a patch which prevents a thread from spending too much "time"
waiting for a mutex in the !CONFIG_MUTEX_SPIN_ON_OWNER case.

Would you like to try this out and see if this addresses the mutex
starvation issue you are seeing in your workload when optimistic
spinning is disabled?
Although it looks like it didn't take care of the 'lock stealing' case
in the slowpath. Here is the updated fixed version:

---
Signed-off-by: Jason Low<jason.low2@xxxxxxx>
---
include/linux/mutex.h | 2 ++
kernel/locking/mutex.c | 65 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------
2 files changed, 60 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/mutex.h b/include/linux/mutex.h
index 2cb7531..c1ca68d 100644
--- a/include/linux/mutex.h
+++ b/include/linux/mutex.h
@@ -57,6 +57,8 @@ struct mutex {
#endif
#ifdef CONFIG_MUTEX_SPIN_ON_OWNER
struct optimistic_spin_queue osq; /* Spinner MCS lock */
+#else
+ bool yield_to_waiter; /* Prevent starvation when spinning disabled */
#endif
#ifdef CONFIG_DEBUG_MUTEXES
void *magic;
You don't need that on non-SMP system. So maybe you should put it under
#ifdef CONFIG_SMP block.
Right, maybe something like:

#ifdef CONFIG_MUTEX_SPIN_ON_OWNER
...
...
#elif !defined(CONFIG_SMP) /* If optimistic spinning disabled */
bool yield_to_waiter;
#endif

@@ -556,7 +595,8 @@ __mutex_lock_common(struct mutex *lock, long state, unsigned int subclass,
* other waiters. We only attempt the xchg if the count is
* non-negative in order to avoid unnecessary xchg operations:
*/
- if (atomic_read(&lock->count)>= 0&&
+ if ((!need_yield_to_waiter(lock) || loop> 1)&&
+ atomic_read(&lock->count)>= 0&&
(atomic_xchg_acquire(&lock->count, -1) == 1))

I think you need to reset the yield_to_waiter variable here when loop>
1 instead of at the end of the loop.
So I think in the current state, only the top waiter would be able to
both set and clear the yield_to_waiter variable anyway. However, I agree
that this detail is not obvious and it would be better to reset the
variable here when loop> 1 to make it more readable.

You should only reset the variable when loop > 1. You may also need to check in the error exit path as well.

Cheers,
Longman