Re: [RFC PATCH 85/86] treewide: drivers: remove cond_resched()

[Ankur Arora]

Chris Packham <Chris.Packham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On 8/11/23 12:08, Ankur Arora wrote:
>> There are broadly three sets of uses of cond_resched():
>>
>> 1.  Calls to cond_resched() out of the goodness of our heart,
>>      otherwise known as avoiding lockup splats.
>>
>> 2.  Open coded variants of cond_resched_lock() which call
>>      cond_resched().
>>
>> 3.  Retry or error handling loops, where cond_resched() is used as a
>>      quick alternative to spinning in a tight-loop.
>>
>> When running under a full preemption model, the cond_resched() reduces
>> to a NOP (not even a barrier) so removing it obviously cannot matter.
>>
>> But considering only voluntary preemption models (for say code that
>> has been mostly tested under those), for set-1 and set-2 the
>> scheduler can now preempt kernel tasks running beyond their time
>> quanta anywhere they are preemptible() [1]. Which removes any need
>> for these explicitly placed scheduling points.
>>
>> The cond_resched() calls in set-3 are a little more difficult.
>> To start with, given it's NOP character under full preemption, it
>> never actually saved us from a tight loop.
>> With voluntary preemption, it's not a NOP, but it might as well be --
>> for most workloads the scheduler does not have an interminable supply
>> of runnable tasks on the runqueue.
>>
>> So, cond_resched() is useful to not get softlockup splats, but not
>> terribly good for error handling. Ideally, these should be replaced
>> with some kind of timed or event wait.
>> For now we use cond_resched_stall(), which tries to schedule if
>> possible, and executes a cpu_relax() if not.
>>
>> The cond_resched() calls here are all kinds. Those from set-1
>> or set-2 are quite straight-forward to handle.
>>
>> There are quite a few from set-3, where as noted above, we
>> use cond_resched() as if it were a amulent. Which I supppose
>> it is, in that it wards off softlockup or RCU splats.
>>
>> Those are now cond_resched_stall(), but in most cases, given
>> that the timeouts are in milliseconds, they could be easily
>> timed waits.
>
> For i2c-mpc.c:
>
> It looks as the code in question could probably be converted to
> readb_poll_timeout(). If I find sufficient round-tuits I might look at
> that. Regardless in the context of the tree-wide change ...
>
> Reviewed-by: Chris Packham <chris.packham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Thanks Chris. This'll take a while before this lands.
I'll see if I can send a patch with cond_resched_stall() or similar
separately.

Meanwhile please feel free to make the readb_poll_timeout() change.

--
ankur