Re: [PATCH 3/5] mm/vmstat: use cmpxchg loop in cpu_vm_stats_fold

From: Christoph Lameter
Date: Mon Feb 06 2023 - 04:42:57 EST


On Fri, 3 Feb 2023, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:

> > Isnt there some lock/serializtion to stall the kernel until you are done?
>
> Not that i know of. Anyway, an additional datapoint is:
>
> "Software defined PLC"
> (https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/software-defined-programmable-logic-controller-introduction),
> applications
> can perform system calls in their time sensitive loop.
>
> One example of an opensource software is OpenPLC.
>
> One would like to avoid interruptions for those cases as well.

Well allowing sytem calls during "time sensitiveness" implies
it is not that sensitive to vmstat updates which have a smaller impact
than system calls.

Unless we are talking about virtual system calls like gettimeofday or
clock_gettime. These do not enter the kernel if configured correctly.