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diff --git a/Documentation/arm/vlocks.txt b/Documentation/arm/vlocks.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..415960a --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/arm/vlocks.txt @@ -0,0 +1,211 @@ +vlocks for Bare-Metal Mutual Exclusion +====================================== + +Voting Locks, or "vlocks" provide a simple low-level mutual exclusion +mechanism, with reasonable but minimal requirements on the memory +system. + +These are intended to be used to coordinate critical activity among CPUs +which are otherwise non-coherent, in situations where the hardware +provides no other mechanism to support this and ordinary spinlocks +cannot be used. + + +vlocks make use of the atomicity provided by the memory system for +writes to a single memory location. To arbitrate, every CPU "votes for +itself", by storing a unique number to a common memory location. The +final value seen in that memory location when all the votes have been +cast identifies the winner. + +In order to make sure that the election produces an unambiguous result +in finite time, a CPU will only enter the election in the first place if +no winner has been chosen and the election does not appear to have +started yet. + + +Algorithm +--------- + +The easiest way to explain the vlocks algorithm is with some pseudo-code: + + + int currently_voting[NR_CPUS] = { 0, }; + int last_vote = -1; /* no votes yet */ + + bool vlock_trylock(int this_cpu) + { + /* signal our desire to vote */ + currently_voting[this_cpu] = 1; + if (last_vote != -1) { + /* someone already volunteered himself */ + currently_voting[this_cpu] = 0; + return false; /* not ourself */ + } + + /* let's suggest ourself */ + last_vote = this_cpu; + currently_voting[this_cpu] = 0; + + /* then wait until everyone else is done voting */ + for_each_cpu(i) { + while (currently_voting[i] != 0) + /* wait */; + } + + /* result */ + if (last_vote == this_cpu) + return true; /* we won */ + return false; + } + + bool vlock_unlock(void) + { + last_vote = -1; + } + + +The currently_voting[] array provides a way for the CPUs to determine +whether an election is in progress, and plays a role analogous to the +"entering" array in Lamport's bakery algorithm [1]. + +However, once the election has started, the underlying memory system +atomicity is used to pick the winner. This avoids the need for a static +priority rule to act as a tie-breaker, or any counters which could +overflow. + +As long as the last_vote variable is globally visible to all CPUs, it +will contain only one value that won't change once every CPU has cleared +its currently_voting flag. + + +Features and limitations +------------------------ + + * vlocks are not intended to be fair. In the contended case, it is the + _last_ CPU which attempts to get the lock which will be most likely + to win. + + vlocks are therefore best suited to situations where it is necessary + to pick a unique winner, but it does not matter which CPU actually + wins. + + * Like other similar mechanisms, vlocks will not scale well to a large + number of CPUs. + + vlocks can be cascaded in a voting hierarchy to permit better scaling + if necessary, as in the following hypothetical example for 4096 CPUs: + + /* first level: local election */ + my_town = towns[(this_cpu >> 4) & 0xf]; + I_won = vlock_trylock(my_town, this_cpu & 0xf); + if (I_won) { + /* we won the town election, let's go for the state */ + my_state = states[(this_cpu >> 8) & 0xf]; + I_won = vlock_lock(my_state, this_cpu & 0xf)); + if (I_won) { + /* and so on */ + I_won = vlock_lock(the_whole_country, this_cpu & 0xf]; + if (I_won) { + /* ... */ + } + vlock_unlock(the_whole_country); + } + vlock_unlock(my_state); + } + vlock_unlock(my_town); + + +ARM implementation +------------------ + +The current ARM implementation [2] contains some optimisations beyond +the basic algorithm: + + * By packing the members of the currently_voting array close together, + we can read the whole array in one transaction (providing the number + of CPUs potentially contending the lock is small enough). This + reduces the number of round-trips required to external memory. + + In the ARM implementation, this means that we can use a single load + and comparison: + + LDR Rt, [Rn] + CMP Rt, #0 + + ...in place of code equivalent to: + + LDRB Rt, [Rn] + CMP Rt, #0 + LDRBEQ Rt, [Rn, #1] + CMPEQ Rt, #0 + LDRBEQ Rt, [Rn, #2] + CMPEQ Rt, #0 + LDRBEQ Rt, [Rn, #3] + CMPEQ Rt, #0 + + This cuts down on the fast-path latency, as well as potentially + reducing bus contention in contended cases. + + The optimisation relies on the fact that the ARM memory system + guarantees coherency between overlapping memory accesses of + different sizes, similarly to many other architectures. Note that + we do not care which element of currently_voting appears in which + bits of Rt, so there is no need to worry about endianness in this + optimisation. + + If there are too many CPUs to read the currently_voting array in + one transaction then multiple transations are still required. The + implementation uses a simple loop of word-sized loads for this + case. The number of transactions is still fewer than would be + required if bytes were loaded individually. + + + In principle, we could aggregate further by using LDRD or LDM, but + to keep the code simple this was not attempted in the initial + implementation. + + + * vlocks are currently only used to coordinate between CPUs which are + unable to enable their caches yet. This means that the + implementation removes many of the barriers which would be required + when executing the algorithm in cached memory. + + packing of the currently_voting array does not work with cached + memory unless all CPUs contending the lock are cache-coherent, due + to cache writebacks from one CPU clobbering values written by other + CPUs. (Though if all the CPUs are cache-coherent, you should be + probably be using proper spinlocks instead anyway). + + + * The "no votes yet" value used for the last_vote variable is 0 (not + -1 as in the pseudocode). This allows statically-allocated vlocks + to be implicitly initialised to an unlocked state simply by putting + them in .bss. + + An offset is added to each CPU's ID for the purpose of setting this + variable, so that no CPU uses the value 0 for its ID. + + +Colophon +-------- + +Originally created and documented by Dave Martin for Linaro Limited, for +use in ARM-based big.LITTLE platforms, with review and input gratefully +received from Nicolas Pitre and Achin Gupta. Thanks to Nicolas for +grabbing most of this text out of the relevant mail thread and writing +up the pseudocode. + +Copyright (C) 2012-2013 Linaro Limited +Distributed under the terms of Version 2 of the GNU General Public +License, as defined in linux/COPYING. + + +References +---------- + +[1] Lamport, L. "A New Solution of Dijkstra's Concurrent Programming + Problem", Communications of the ACM 17, 8 (August 1974), 453-455. + + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport%27s_bakery_algorithm + +[2] linux/arch/arm/common/vlock.S, www.kernel.org. |
