[3.16.y-ckt stable] Patch "rcu: Use rcu_gp_kthread_wake() to wake up grace period kthreads" has been added to staging queue

[Luis Henriques]

This is a note to let you know that I have just added a patch titled

    rcu: Use rcu_gp_kthread_wake() to wake up grace period kthreads

to the linux-3.16.y-queue branch of the 3.16.y-ckt extended stable tree 
which can be found at:

 http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=ubuntu/linux.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/linux-3.16.y-queue

This patch is scheduled to be released in version 3.16.7-ckt2.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to this tree, please 
reply to this email.

For more information about the 3.16.y-ckt tree, see
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable

Thanks.
-Luis

------

>From f2e9f1a403bd0e50fe6c7705c059cf4f708a1136 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Pranith Kumar <bobby.prani at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 13:07:47 -0400
Subject: rcu: Use rcu_gp_kthread_wake() to wake up grace period kthreads

commit 2aa792e6faf1a00f5accf1f69e87e11a390ba2cd upstream.

The rcu_gp_kthread_wake() function checks for three conditions before
waking up grace period kthreads:

*  Is the thread we are trying to wake up the current thread?
*  Are the gp_flags zero? (all threads wait on non-zero gp_flags condition)
*  Is there no thread created for this flavour, hence nothing to wake up?

If any one of these condition is true, we do not call wake_up().
It was found that there are quite a few avoidable wake ups both during
idle time and under stress induced by rcutorture.

Idle:

Total:66000, unnecessary:66000, case1:61827, case2:66000, case3:0
Total:68000, unnecessary:68000, case1:63696, case2:68000, case3:0

rcutorture:

Total:254000, unnecessary:254000, case1:199913, case2:254000, case3:0
Total:256000, unnecessary:256000, case1:201784, case2:256000, case3:0

Here case{1-3} are the cases listed above. We can avoid these wake
ups by using rcu_gp_kthread_wake() to conditionally wake up the grace
period kthreads.

There is a comment about an implied barrier supplied by the wake_up()
logic.  This barrier is necessary for the awakened thread to see the
updated ->gp_flags.  This flag is always being updated with the root node
lock held. Also, the awakened thread tries to acquire the root node lock
before reading ->gp_flags because of which there is proper ordering.

Hence this commit tries to avoid calling wake_up() whenever we can by
using rcu_gp_kthread_wake() function.

Signed-off-by: Pranith Kumar <bobby.prani at gmail.com>
CC: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers at efficios.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis Henriques <luis.henriques at canonical.com>
---
 kernel/rcu/tree.c | 4 ++--
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/kernel/rcu/tree.c b/kernel/rcu/tree.c
index 625d0b0cd75a..627180d3bed4 100644
--- a/kernel/rcu/tree.c
+++ b/kernel/rcu/tree.c
@@ -1931,7 +1931,7 @@ static void rcu_report_qs_rsp(struct rcu_state *rsp, unsigned long flags)
 {
 	WARN_ON_ONCE(!rcu_gp_in_progress(rsp));
 	raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore(&rcu_get_root(rsp)->lock, flags);
-	wake_up(&rsp->gp_wq);  /* Memory barrier implied by wake_up() path. */
+	rcu_gp_kthread_wake(rsp);
 }

 /*
@@ -2510,7 +2510,7 @@ static void force_quiescent_state(struct rcu_state *rsp)
 	}
 	ACCESS_ONCE(rsp->gp_flags) |= RCU_GP_FLAG_FQS;
 	raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore(&rnp_old->lock, flags);
-	wake_up(&rsp->gp_wq);  /* Memory barrier implied by wake_up() path. */
+	rcu_gp_kthread_wake(rsp);
 }

 /*
--
2.1.0