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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head><title>A Tour Through TREE_RCU's Expedited Grace Periods</title>
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<h2>Introduction</h2>
This document describes RCU's expedited grace periods.
Unlike RCU's normal grace periods, which accept long latencies to attain
high efficiency and minimal disturbance, expedited grace periods accept
lower efficiency and significant disturbance to attain shorter latencies.
<p>
There are three flavors of RCU (RCU-bh, RCU-preempt, and RCU-sched),
but only two flavors of expedited grace periods because the RCU-bh
expedited grace period maps onto the RCU-sched expedited grace period.
Each of the remaining two implementations is covered in its own section.
<ol>
<li> <a href="#Expedited Grace Period Design">
Expedited Grace Period Design</a>
<li> <a href="#RCU-preempt Expedited Grace Periods">
RCU-preempt Expedited Grace Periods</a>
<li> <a href="#RCU-sched Expedited Grace Periods">
RCU-sched Expedited Grace Periods</a>
<li> <a href="#Expedited Grace Period and CPU Hotplug">
Expedited Grace Period and CPU Hotplug</a>
<li> <a href="#Expedited Grace Period Refinements">
Expedited Grace Period Refinements</a>
</ol>
<h2><a name="Expedited Grace Period Design">
Expedited Grace Period Design</a></h2>
<p>
The expedited RCU grace periods cannot be accused of being subtle,
given that they for all intents and purposes hammer every CPU that
has not yet provided a quiescent state for the current expedited
grace period.
The one saving grace is that the hammer has grown a bit smaller
over time: The old call to <tt>try_stop_cpus()</tt> has been
replaced with a set of calls to <tt>smp_call_function_single()</tt>,
each of which results in an IPI to the target CPU.
The corresponding handler function checks the CPU's state, motivating
a faster quiescent state where possible, and triggering a report
of that quiescent state.
As always for RCU, once everything has spent some time in a quiescent
state, the expedited grace period has completed.
<p>
The details of the <tt>smp_call_function_single()</tt> handler's
operation depend on the RCU flavor, as described in the following
sections.
<h2><a name="RCU-preempt Expedited Grace Periods">
RCU-preempt Expedited Grace Periods</a></h2>
<p>
The overall flow of the handling of a given CPU by an RCU-preempt
expedited grace period is shown in the following diagram:
<p><img src="ExpRCUFlow.svg" alt="ExpRCUFlow.svg" width="55%">
<p>
The solid arrows denote direct action, for example, a function call.
The dotted arrows denote indirect action, for example, an IPI
or a state that is reached after some time.
<p>
If a given CPU is offline or idle, <tt>synchronize_rcu_expedited()</tt>
will ignore it because idle and offline CPUs are already residing
in quiescent states.
Otherwise, the expedited grace period will use
<tt>smp_call_function_single()</tt> to send the CPU an IPI, which
is handled by <tt>sync_rcu_exp_handler()</tt>.
<p>
However, because this is preemptible RCU, <tt>sync_rcu_exp_handler()</tt>
can check to see if the CPU is currently running in an RCU read-side
critical section.
If not, the handler can immediately report a quiescent state.
Otherwise, it sets flags so that the outermost <tt>rcu_read_unlock()</tt>
invocation will provide the needed quiescent-state report.
This flag-setting avoids the previous forced preemption of all
CPUs that might have RCU read-side critical sections.
In addition, this flag-setting is done so as to avoid increasing
the overhead of the common-case fastpath through the scheduler.
<p>
Again because this is preemptible RCU, an RCU read-side critical section
can be preempted.
When that happens, RCU will enqueue the task, which will the continue to
block the current expedited grace period until it resumes and finds its
outermost <tt>rcu_read_unlock()</tt>.
The CPU will report a quiescent state just after enqueuing the task because
the CPU is no longer blocking the grace period.
It is instead the preempted task doing the blocking.
The list of blocked tasks is managed by <tt>rcu_preempt_ctxt_queue()</tt>,
which is called from <tt>rcu_preempt_note_context_switch()</tt>, which
in turn is called from <tt>rcu_note_context_switch()</tt>, which in
turn is called from the scheduler.
<table>
<tr><th> </th></tr>
<tr><th align="left">Quick Quiz:</th></tr>
<tr><td>
Why not just have the expedited grace period check the
state of all the CPUs?
After all, that would avoid all those real-time-unfriendly IPIs.
</td></tr>
<tr><th align="left">Answer:</th></tr>
<tr><td bgcolor="#ffffff"><font color="ffffff">
Because we want the RCU read-side critical sections to run fast,
which means no memory barriers.
Therefore, it is not possible to safely check the state from some
other CPU.
And even if it was possible to safely check the state, it would
still be necessary to IPI the CPU to safely interact with the
upcoming <tt>rcu_read_unlock()</tt> invocation, which means that
the remote state testing would not help the worst-case
latency that real-time applications care about.
<p><font color="ffffff">One way to prevent your real-time
application from getting hit with these IPIs is to
build your kernel with <tt>CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL=y</tt>.
RCU would then perceive the CPU running your application
as being idle, and it would be able to safely detect that
state without needing to IPI the CPU.
</font></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
</table>
<p>
Please note that this is just the overall flow:
Additional complications can arise due to races with CPUs going idle
or offline, among other things.
<h2><a name="RCU-sched Expedited Grace Periods">
RCU-sched Expedited Grace Periods</a></h2>
<p>
The overall flow of the handling of a given CPU by an RCU-sched
expedited grace period is shown in the following diagram:
<p><img src="ExpSchedFlow.svg" alt="ExpSchedFlow.svg" width="55%">
<p>
As with RCU-preempt's <tt>synchronize_rcu_expedited()</tt>,
<tt>synchronize_sched_expedited()</tt> ignores offline and
idle CPUs, again because they are in remotely detectable
quiescent states.
However, the <tt>synchronize_rcu_expedited()</tt> handler
is <tt>sync_sched_exp_handler()</tt>, and because the
<tt>rcu_read_lock_sched()</tt> and <tt>rcu_read_unlock_sched()</tt>
leave no trace of their invocation, in general it is not possible to tell
whether or not the current CPU is in an RCU read-side critical section.
The best that <tt>sync_sched_exp_handler()</tt> can do is to check
for idle, on the off-chance that the CPU went idle while the IPI
was in flight.
If the CPU is idle, then tt>sync_sched_exp_handler()</tt> reports
the quiescent state.
<p>
Otherwise, the handler invokes <tt>resched_cpu()</tt>, which forces
a future context switch.
At the time of the context switch, the CPU reports the quiescent state.
Should the CPU go offline first, it will report the quiescent state
at that time.
<h2><a name="Expedited Grace Period and CPU Hotplug">
Expedited Grace Period and CPU Hotplug</a></h2>
<p>
The expedited nature of expedited grace periods require a much tighter
interaction with CPU hotplug operations than is required for normal
grace periods.
In addition, attempting to IPI offline CPUs will result in splats, but
failing to IPI online CPUs can result in too-short grace periods.
Neither option is acceptable in production kernels.
<p>
The interaction between expedited grace periods and CPU hotplug operations
is carried out at several levels:
<ol>
<li> The number of CPUs that have ever been online is tracked
by the <tt>rcu_state</tt> structure's <tt>->ncpus</tt>
field.
The <tt>rcu_state</tt> structure's <tt>->ncpus_snap</tt>
field tracks the number of CPUs that have ever been online
at the beginning of an RCU expedited grace period.
Note that this number never decreases, at least in the absence
of a time machine.
<li> The identities of the CPUs that have ever been online is
tracked by the <tt>rcu_node</tt> structure's
<tt>->expmaskinitnext</tt> field.
The <tt>rcu_node</tt> structure's <tt>->expmaskinit</tt>
field tracks the identities of the CPUs that were online
at least once at the beginning of the most recent RCU
expedited grace period.
The <tt>rcu_state</tt> structure's <tt>->ncpus</tt> and
<tt>->ncpus_snap</tt> fields are used to detect when
new CPUs have come online for the first time, that is,
when the <tt>rcu_node</tt> structure's <tt>->expmaskinitnext</tt>
field has changed since the beginning of the last RCU
expedited grace period, which triggers an update of each
<tt>rcu_node</tt> structure's <tt>->expmaskinit</tt>
field from its <tt>->expmaskinitnext</tt> field.
<li> Each <tt>rcu_node</tt> structure's <tt>->expmaskinit</tt>
field is used to initialize that structure's
<tt>->expmask</tt> at the beginning of each RCU
expedited grace period.
This means that only those CPUs that have been online at least
once will be considered for a given grace period.
<li> Any CPU that goes offline will clear its bit in its leaf
<tt>rcu_node</tt> structure's <tt>->qsmaskinitnext</tt>
field, so any CPU with that bit clear can safely be ignored.
However, it is possible for a CPU coming online or going offline
to have this bit set for some time while <tt>cpu_online</tt>
returns <tt>false</tt>.
<li> For each non-idle CPU that RCU believes is currently online, the grace
period invokes <tt>smp_call_function_single()</tt>.
If this succeeds, the CPU was fully online.
Failure indicates that the CPU is in the process of coming online
or going offline, in which case it is necessary to wait for a
short time period and try again.
The purpose of this wait (or series of waits, as the case may be)
is to permit a concurrent CPU-hotplug operation to complete.
<li> In the case of RCU-sched, one of the last acts of an outgoing CPU
is to invoke <tt>rcu_report_dead()</tt>, which
reports a quiescent state for that CPU.
However, this is likely paranoia-induced redundancy. <!-- @@@ -->
</ol>
<table>
<tr><th> </th></tr>
<tr><th align="left">Quick Quiz:</th></tr>
<tr><td>
Why all the dancing around with multiple counters and masks
tracking CPUs that were once online?
Why not just have a single set of masks tracking the currently
online CPUs and be done with it?
</td></tr>
<tr><th align="left">Answer:</th></tr>
<tr><td bgcolor="#ffffff"><font color="ffffff">
Maintaining single set of masks tracking the online CPUs <i>sounds</i>
easier, at least until you try working out all the race conditions
between grace-period initialization and CPU-hotplug operations.
For example, suppose initialization is progressing down the
tree while a CPU-offline operation is progressing up the tree.
This situation can result in bits set at the top of the tree
that have no counterparts at the bottom of the tree.
Those bits will never be cleared, which will result in
grace-period hangs.
In short, that way lies madness, to say nothing of a great many
bugs, hangs, and deadlocks.
<p><font color="ffffff">
In contrast, the current multi-mask multi-counter scheme ensures
that grace-period initialization will always see consistent masks
up and down the tree, which brings significant simplifications
over the single-mask method.
<p><font color="ffffff">
This is an instance of
<a href="http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~library/TR-repository/reports/reports-1992/cucs-039-92.ps.gz"><font color="ffffff">
deferring work in order to avoid synchronization</a>.
Lazily recording CPU-hotplug events at the beginning of the next
grace period greatly simplifies maintenance of the CPU-tracking
bitmasks in the <tt>rcu_node</tt> tree.
</font></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
</table>
<h2><a name="Expedited Grace Period Refinements">
Expedited Grace Period Refinements</a></h2>
<ol>
<li> <a href="#Idle-CPU Checks">Idle-CPU checks</a>.
<li> <a href="#Batching via Sequence Counter">
Batching via sequence counter</a>.
<li> <a href="#Funnel Locking and Wait/Wakeup">
Funnel locking and wait/wakeup</a>.
<li> <
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