Re: [RFC PATCH] s390/uaccess: Limit number of retries for cmpxchg_user_key

From: Heiko Carstens
Date: Thu Nov 17 2022 - 13:20:40 EST


On Thu, Nov 17, 2022 at 11:07:45AM +0100, Janis Schoetterl-Glausch wrote:
> cmpxchg_user_key for byte and short values is implemented via a one word
> cmpxchg loop. Give up trying to perform the cmpxchg if it fails too
> often because of contention on the cache line. This ensures that the
> thread cannot become stuck in the kernel.
>
> Signed-off-by: Janis Schoetterl-Glausch <scgl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>
>
> 128 might seem like a small number, but it actually seems to be plenty.
> I could not get it to return EAGAIN with MAX_LOOP being 8 while 248
> vcpus/threads are hammering the same word.
> This could mean that we don't actually need to limit the number of
> retries, but then, I didn't simulate the absolute worst case, where
> the competing threads are running on dedicated cpus.
>
>
> arch/s390/include/asm/uaccess.h | 35 +++++++++++++++++++++++----------
> 1 file changed, 25 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)

Looks good, also applied to wip/cmpxchg_user_branch.

Thanks!