This thread had fairly intense discussion for two days, but then went dead.
Do folks think this is worth discussing at the kernel summit?
thanks,
- Ted
On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 10:49:36AM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> This is a bit late, but here goes anyway.
>
> Having played with the x86 context tracking hooks for awhile, I think
> it would be nice if core code that needs to be aware of CPU context
> (kernel, user, idle, guest, etc) could come up with single,
> comprehensible, easily validated set of hooks that arch code is
> supposed to call.
>
> Currently we have:
>
> - RCU hooks, which come in a wide variety to notify about IRQs, NMIs, etc.
>
> - Context tracking hooks. Only used by some arches. Calling these
> calls the RCU hooks for you in most cases. They have weird
> interactions with interrupts and they're slow.
>
> - vtime. Beats the heck out of me.
>
> - Whatever deferred things Christoph keeps reminding us about.
>
> Honestly, I don't fully understand what all these hooks are supposed
> to do, nor do I care all that much. From my perspective, the code
> code should be able to do whatever it wants and rely on appropriate
> notifications from arch code. It would be great if we could come up
> with something straightforward that covers everything. For example:
>
> user_mode_to_kernel_mode()
> kernel_mode_to_user_mode()
> kernel_mode_to_guest_mode()
> in_a_periodic_tick()
> starting_nmi()
> ending_nmi()
> may_i_turn_off_ticks_right_now()
> or, better yet:
> i_am_turning_off_ticks_right_now_and_register_your_own_darned_hrtimer_if_thats_a_problem()
>
> Some arches may need:
>
> i_am_lame_and_forgot_my_previous_context()
>
> x86 will soon (4.3 or 4.4, depending on how my syscall cleanup goes)
> no longer need that.
>
> Paul says that some arches need something that goes straight from IRQ
> to user mode (?) -- sigh.
>
> etc.
>
> It might make sense to get enough people who understand what's going
> on behind the scenes together to hash out the requirements.
>
> --Andy
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