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diff --git a/Documentation/locking/mutex-design.txt b/Documentation/locking/mutex-design.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000..818aca196 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/locking/mutex-design.txt @@ -0,0 +1,142 @@ +Generic Mutex Subsystem + +started by Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com> +updated by Davidlohr Bueso <davidlohr@hp.com> + +What are mutexes? +----------------- + +In the Linux kernel, mutexes refer to a particular locking primitive +that enforces serialization on shared memory systems, and not only to +the generic term referring to 'mutual exclusion' found in academia +or similar theoretical text books. Mutexes are sleeping locks which +behave similarly to binary semaphores, and were introduced in 2006[1] +as an alternative to these. This new data structure provided a number +of advantages, including simpler interfaces, and at that time smaller +code (see Disadvantages). + +[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/164802/ + +Implementation +-------------- + +Mutexes are represented by 'struct mutex', defined in include/linux/mutex.h +and implemented in kernel/locking/mutex.c. These locks use an atomic variable +(->owner) to keep track of the lock state during its lifetime. Field owner +actually contains 'struct task_struct *' to the current lock owner and it is +therefore NULL if not currently owned. Since task_struct pointers are aligned +at at least L1_CACHE_BYTES, low bits (3) are used to store extra state (e.g., +if waiter list is non-empty). In its most basic form it also includes a +wait-queue and a spinlock that serializes access to it. Furthermore, +CONFIG_MUTEX_SPIN_ON_OWNER=y systems use a spinner MCS lock (->osq), described +below in (ii). + +When acquiring a mutex, there are three possible paths that can be +taken, depending on the state of the lock: + +(i) fastpath: tries to atomically acquire the lock by cmpxchg()ing the owner with + the current task. This only works in the uncontended case (cmpxchg() checks + against 0UL, so all 3 state bits above have to be 0). If the lock is + contended it goes to the next possible path. + +(ii) midpath: aka optimistic spinning, tries to spin for acquisition + while the lock owner is running and there are no other tasks ready + to run that have higher priority (need_resched). The rationale is + that if the lock owner is running, it is likely to release the lock + soon. The mutex spinners are queued up using MCS lock so that only + one spinner can compete for the mutex. + + The MCS lock (proposed by Mellor-Crummey and Scott) is a simple spinlock + with the desirable properties of being fair and with each cpu trying + to acquire the lock spinning on a local variable. It avoids expensive + cacheline bouncing that common test-and-set spinlock implementations + incur. An MCS-like lock is specially tailored for optimistic spinning + for sleeping lock implementation. An important feature of the customized + MCS lock is that it has the extra property that spinners are able to exit + the MCS spinlock queue when they need to reschedule. This further helps + avoid situations where MCS spinners that need to reschedule would continue + waiting to spin on mutex owner, only to go directly to slowpath upon + obtaining the MCS lock. + + +(iii) slowpath: last resort, if the lock is still unable to be acquired, + the task is added to the wait-queue and sleeps until woken up by the + unlock path. Under normal circumstances it blocks as TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE. + +While formally kernel mutexes are sleepable locks, it is path (ii) that +makes them more practically a hybrid type. By simply not interrupting a +task and busy-waiting for a few cycles instead of immediately sleeping, +the performance of this lock has been seen to significantly improve a +number of workloads. Note that this technique is also used for rw-semaphores. + +Semantics +--------- + +The mutex subsystem checks and enforces the following rules: + + - Only one task can hold the mutex at a time. + - Only the owner can unlock the mutex. + - Multiple unlocks are not permitted. + - Recursive locking/unlocking is not permitted. + - A mutex must only be initialized via the API (see below). + - A task may not exit with a mutex held. + - Memory areas where held locks reside must not be freed. + - Held mutexes must not be reinitialized. + - Mutexes may not be used in hardware or software interrupt + contexts such as tasklets and timers. + +These semantics are fully enforced when CONFIG DEBUG_MUTEXES is enabled. +In addition, the mutex debugging code also implements a number of other +features that make lock debugging easier and faster: + + - Uses symbolic names of mutexes, whenever they are printed + in debug output. + - Point-of-acquire tracking, symbolic lookup of function names, + list of all locks held in the system, printout of them. + - Owner tracking. + - Detects self-recursing locks and prints out all relevant info. + - Detects multi-task circular deadlocks and prints out all affected + locks and tasks (and only those tasks). + + +Interfaces +---------- +Statically define the mutex: + DEFINE_MUTEX(name); + +Dynamically initialize the mutex: + mutex_init(mutex); + +Acquire the mutex, uninterruptible: + void mutex_lock(struct mutex *lock); + void mutex_lock_nested(struct mutex *lock, unsigned int subclass); + int mutex_trylock(struct mutex *lock); + +Acquire the mutex, interruptible: + int mutex_lock_interruptible_nested(struct mutex *lock, + unsigned int subclass); + int mutex_lock_interruptible(struct mutex *lock); + +Acquire the mutex, interruptible, if dec to 0: + int atomic_dec_and_mutex_lock(atomic_t *cnt, struct mutex *lock); + +Unlock the mutex: + void mutex_unlock(struct mutex *lock); + +Test if the mutex is taken: + int mutex_is_locked(struct mutex *lock); + +Disadvantages +------------- + +Unlike its original design and purpose, 'struct mutex' is among the largest +locks in the kernel. E.g: on x86-64 it is 32 bytes, where 'struct semaphore' +is 24 bytes and rw_semaphore is 40 bytes. Larger structure sizes mean more CPU +cache and memory footprint. + +When to use mutexes +------------------- + +Unless the strict semantics of mutexes are unsuitable and/or the critical +region prevents the lock from being shared, always prefer them to any other +locking primitive. |