On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Robert Watson wrote:
>
> On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Bruce Evans wrote:
>
> > How much faster (or slower) will it be for threaded programs (for
> > various numbers of CPUs)? I don't see how it can be faster for a single
> > CPU (interrupt threads in the kernel show that using threads tends to
> > pessimize both efficiency and latency for a single CPU).
>
> Note that we won't be able to see some of the impactmpacted until SMPng is
> further along, where KSE will pessimize a number of single-thread
> operations. For example, right now SMPng proc locking relies on certain
> proc structure entries being changed only by curproc, meaning that locks
> are held for reading only by other processes. With KSE, we'll need to
> actually hold real locks when acting on those curproc entries (in
> particular, reads) which may impose a substantial performance overhead. I
> would anticipate that a number of the other potential shortcuts in SMPng
> would be similarly impacted by KSE. However, since SMPng is very much a
> work in progress right now, that's not something I think we can quantify
> yet.
>
> This general issue does raise a lot of concerns however -- many locking
> assumptions in SMPng will need to be changed, and the locking will need to
> be much more thorough before we can move forward. Even pre-SMPng, we've
> had race issues relating to unexpected sleeps, this will only get more
> hairy (although architecturally better) with SMPng. I'm worried that
> throwing KSE into the mix is going to hurt a lot.
I'm not sure I understand completely. Our current process lock is
still the same, especially since everything is single KSE'd (threaded)
unless explicitly enabled. As long as we don't try to push down the
process lock any further (for now) into the KSE structures, what's
the difference?
This will get the code into the base kernel and make those doing the
locking aware of what will be needed in the future. You don't have
to change process locking until you're ready to. I don't even care
right now whether we can have multiple KSEs or KSE Groups. Just a
single KSE is enough for us to start.
--
Dan Eischen
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