• Sebastian Andrzej Siewior's avatar
    percpu-refcount: Use normal instead of RCU-sched" · 9e8d42a0
    Sebastian Andrzej Siewior authored
    This is a revert of commit
       a4244454 ("percpu-refcount: use RCU-sched insted of normal RCU")
    
    which claims the only reason for using RCU-sched is
       "rcu_read_[un]lock() … are slightly more expensive than preempt_disable/enable()"
    
    and
        "As the RCU critical sections are extremely short, using sched-RCU
        shouldn't have any latency implications."
    
    The problem with using RCU-sched here is that it disables preemption and
    the release callback (called from percpu_ref_put_many()) must not
    acquire any sleeping locks like spinlock_t. This breaks PREEMPT_RT
    because some of the users acquire spinlock_t locks in their callbacks.
    
    Using rcu_read_lock() on PREEMPTION=n kernels is not any different
    compared to rcu_read_lock_sched(). On PREEMPTION=y kernels there are
    already performance issues due to additional preemption points.
    Looking at the code, the rcu_read_lock() is just an increment and unlock
    is almost just a decrement unless there is something special to do. Both
    are functions while disabling preemption is inlined.
    Doing a small benchmark, the minimal amount of time required was mostly
    the same. The average time required was higher due to the higher MAX
    value (which could be preemption). With DEBUG_PREEMPT=y it is
    rcu_read_lock_sched() that takes a little longer due to the additional
    debug code.
    
    Convert back to normal RCU.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarSebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarDennis Zhou <dennis@kernel.org>
    9e8d42a0
percpu-refcount.h 10.4 KB