rcu: Call out dangers of expedited RCU primitives

The expedited RCU primitives can be quite useful, but they have some
high costs as well.  This commit updates and creates docbook comments
calling out the costs, and updates the RCU documentation as well.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>

1 files changed, 16 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/rcutree.h b/include/linux/rcutree.h
index 7389248..e8ee5dd 100644
--- a/include/linux/rcutree.h
+++ b/include/linux/rcutree.h
@@ -63,6 +63,22 @@ extern void synchronize_rcu_expedited(void);
 
 void kfree_call_rcu(struct rcu_head *head, void (*func)(struct rcu_head *rcu));
 
+/**
+ * synchronize_rcu_bh_expedited - Brute-force RCU-bh grace period
+ *
+ * Wait for an RCU-bh grace period to elapse, but use a "big hammer"
+ * approach to force the grace period to end quickly.  This consumes
+ * significant time on all CPUs and is unfriendly to real-time workloads,
+ * so is thus not recommended for any sort of common-case code.  In fact,
+ * if you are using synchronize_rcu_bh_expedited() in a loop, please
+ * restructure your code to batch your updates, and then use a single
+ * synchronize_rcu_bh() instead.
+ *
+ * Note that it is illegal to call this function while holding any lock
+ * that is acquired by a CPU-hotplug notifier.  And yes, it is also illegal
+ * to call this function from a CPU-hotplug notifier.  Failing to observe
+ * these restriction will result in deadlock.
+ */
 static inline void synchronize_rcu_bh_expedited(void)
 {
 	synchronize_sched_expedited();