rcu: refactor RCU's context-switch handling

The addition of preemptible RCU to treercu resulted in a bit of
confusion and inefficiency surrounding the handling of context switches
for RCU-sched and for RCU-preempt.  For RCU-sched, a context switch
is a quiescent state, pure and simple, just like it always has been.
For RCU-preempt, a context switch is in no way a quiescent state, but
special handling is required when a task blocks in an RCU read-side
critical section.

However, the callout from the scheduler and the outer loop in ksoftirqd
still calls something named rcu_sched_qs(), whose name is no longer
accurate.  Furthermore, when rcu_check_callbacks() notes an RCU-sched
quiescent state, it ends up unnecessarily (though harmlessly, aside
from the performance hit) enqueuing the current task if it happens to
be running in an RCU-preempt read-side critical section.  This not only
increases the maximum latency of scheduler_tick(), it also needlessly
increases the overhead of the next outermost rcu_read_unlock() invocation.

This patch addresses this situation by separating the notion of RCU's
context-switch handling from that of RCU-sched's quiescent states.
The context-switch handling is covered by rcu_note_context_switch() in
general and by rcu_preempt_note_context_switch() for preemptible RCU.
This permits rcu_sched_qs() to handle quiescent states and only quiescent
states.  It also reduces the maximum latency of scheduler_tick(), though
probably by much less than a microsecond.  Finally, it means that tasks
within preemptible-RCU read-side critical sections avoid incurring the
overhead of queuing unless there really is a context switch.

Suggested-by: Lai Jiangshan <laijs@cn.fujitsu.com>
Acked-by: Lai Jiangshan <laijs@cn.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/rcutree_plugin.h b/kernel/rcutree_plugin.h
index 687c4e90722e..f9bc83a047da 100644
--- a/kernel/rcutree_plugin.h
+++ b/kernel/rcutree_plugin.h
@@ -75,13 +75,19 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(rcu_force_quiescent_state);
  * that this just means that the task currently running on the CPU is
  * not in a quiescent state.  There might be any number of tasks blocked
  * while in an RCU read-side critical section.
+ *
+ * Unlike the other rcu_*_qs() functions, callers to this function
+ * must disable irqs in order to protect the assignment to
+ * ->rcu_read_unlock_special.
  */
 static void rcu_preempt_qs(int cpu)
 {
 	struct rcu_data *rdp = &per_cpu(rcu_preempt_data, cpu);
+
 	rdp->passed_quiesc_completed = rdp->gpnum - 1;
 	barrier();
 	rdp->passed_quiesc = 1;
+	current->rcu_read_unlock_special &= ~RCU_READ_UNLOCK_NEED_QS;
 }
 
 /*
@@ -144,9 +150,8 @@ static void rcu_preempt_note_context_switch(int cpu)
 	 * grace period, then the fact that the task has been enqueued
 	 * means that we continue to block the current grace period.
 	 */
-	rcu_preempt_qs(cpu);
 	local_irq_save(flags);
-	t->rcu_read_unlock_special &= ~RCU_READ_UNLOCK_NEED_QS;
+	rcu_preempt_qs(cpu);
 	local_irq_restore(flags);
 }
 
@@ -236,7 +241,6 @@ static void rcu_read_unlock_special(struct task_struct *t)
 	 */
 	special = t->rcu_read_unlock_special;
 	if (special & RCU_READ_UNLOCK_NEED_QS) {
-		t->rcu_read_unlock_special &= ~RCU_READ_UNLOCK_NEED_QS;
 		rcu_preempt_qs(smp_processor_id());
 	}
 
@@ -473,7 +477,6 @@ static void rcu_preempt_check_callbacks(int cpu)
 	struct task_struct *t = current;
 
 	if (t->rcu_read_lock_nesting == 0) {
-		t->rcu_read_unlock_special &= ~RCU_READ_UNLOCK_NEED_QS;
 		rcu_preempt_qs(cpu);
 		return;
 	}