diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/powerpc/transactional_memory.txt | 32 |
1 files changed, 16 insertions, 16 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/powerpc/transactional_memory.txt b/Documentation/powerpc/transactional_memory.txt index ba0a2a4a54ba..ded69794a5c0 100644 --- a/Documentation/powerpc/transactional_memory.txt +++ b/Documentation/powerpc/transactional_memory.txt @@ -74,23 +74,22 @@ Causes of transaction aborts Syscalls ======== -Syscalls made from within an active transaction will not be performed and the -transaction will be doomed by the kernel with the failure code TM_CAUSE_SYSCALL -| TM_CAUSE_PERSISTENT. +Performing syscalls from within transaction is not recommended, and can lead +to unpredictable results. -Syscalls made from within a suspended transaction are performed as normal and -the transaction is not explicitly doomed by the kernel. However, what the -kernel does to perform the syscall may result in the transaction being doomed -by the hardware. The syscall is performed in suspended mode so any side -effects will be persistent, independent of transaction success or failure. No -guarantees are provided by the kernel about which syscalls will affect -transaction success. +Syscalls do not by design abort transactions, but beware: The kernel code will +not be running in transactional state. The effect of syscalls will always +remain visible, but depending on the call they may abort your transaction as a +side-effect, read soon-to-be-aborted transactional data that should not remain +invisible, etc. If you constantly retry a transaction that constantly aborts +itself by calling a syscall, you'll have a livelock & make no progress. -Care must be taken when relying on syscalls to abort during active transactions -if the calls are made via a library. Libraries may cache values (which may -give the appearance of success) or perform operations that cause transaction -failure before entering the kernel (which may produce different failure codes). -Examples are glibc's getpid() and lazy symbol resolution. +Simple syscalls (e.g. sigprocmask()) "could" be OK. Even things like write() +from, say, printf() should be OK as long as the kernel does not access any +memory that was accessed transactionally. + +Consider any syscalls that happen to work as debug-only -- not recommended for +production use. Best to queue them up till after the transaction is over. Signals @@ -177,7 +176,8 @@ kernel aborted a transaction: TM_CAUSE_RESCHED Thread was rescheduled. TM_CAUSE_TLBI Software TLB invalid. TM_CAUSE_FAC_UNAV FP/VEC/VSX unavailable trap. - TM_CAUSE_SYSCALL Syscall from active transaction. + TM_CAUSE_SYSCALL Currently unused; future syscalls that must abort + transactions for consistency will use this. TM_CAUSE_SIGNAL Signal delivered. TM_CAUSE_MISC Currently unused. TM_CAUSE_ALIGNMENT Alignment fault. |