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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/rt-mutex.txt')
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diff --git a/Documentation/rt-mutex.txt b/Documentation/rt-mutex.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..243393d882ee --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/rt-mutex.txt @@ -0,0 +1,79 @@ +RT-mutex subsystem with PI support +---------------------------------- + +RT-mutexes with priority inheritance are used to support PI-futexes, +which enable pthread_mutex_t priority inheritance attributes +(PTHREAD_PRIO_INHERIT). [See Documentation/pi-futex.txt for more details +about PI-futexes.] + +This technology was developed in the -rt tree and streamlined for +pthread_mutex support. + +Basic principles: +----------------- + +RT-mutexes extend the semantics of simple mutexes by the priority +inheritance protocol. + +A low priority owner of a rt-mutex inherits the priority of a higher +priority waiter until the rt-mutex is released. If the temporarily +boosted owner blocks on a rt-mutex itself it propagates the priority +boosting to the owner of the other rt_mutex it gets blocked on. The +priority boosting is immediately removed once the rt_mutex has been +unlocked. + +This approach allows us to shorten the block of high-prio tasks on +mutexes which protect shared resources. Priority inheritance is not a +magic bullet for poorly designed applications, but it allows +well-designed applications to use userspace locks in critical parts of +an high priority thread, without losing determinism. + +The enqueueing of the waiters into the rtmutex waiter list is done in +priority order. For same priorities FIFO order is chosen. For each +rtmutex, only the top priority waiter is enqueued into the owner's +priority waiters list. This list too queues in priority order. Whenever +the top priority waiter of a task changes (for example it timed out or +got a signal), the priority of the owner task is readjusted. [The +priority enqueueing is handled by "plists", see include/linux/plist.h +for more details.] + +RT-mutexes are optimized for fastpath operations and have no internal +locking overhead when locking an uncontended mutex or unlocking a mutex +without waiters. The optimized fastpath operations require cmpxchg +support. [If that is not available then the rt-mutex internal spinlock +is used] + +The state of the rt-mutex is tracked via the owner field of the rt-mutex +structure: + +rt_mutex->owner holds the task_struct pointer of the owner. Bit 0 and 1 +are used to keep track of the "owner is pending" and "rtmutex has +waiters" state. + + owner bit1 bit0 + NULL 0 0 mutex is free (fast acquire possible) + NULL 0 1 invalid state + NULL 1 0 Transitional state* + NULL 1 1 invalid state + taskpointer 0 0 mutex is held (fast release possible) + taskpointer 0 1 task is pending owner + taskpointer 1 0 mutex is held and has waiters + taskpointer 1 1 task is pending owner and mutex has waiters + +Pending-ownership handling is a performance optimization: +pending-ownership is assigned to the first (highest priority) waiter of +the mutex, when the mutex is released. The thread is woken up and once +it starts executing it can acquire the mutex. Until the mutex is taken +by it (bit 0 is cleared) a competing higher priority thread can "steal" +the mutex which puts the woken up thread back on the waiters list. + +The pending-ownership optimization is especially important for the +uninterrupted workflow of high-prio tasks which repeatedly +takes/releases locks that have lower-prio waiters. Without this +optimization the higher-prio thread would ping-pong to the lower-prio +task [because at unlock time we always assign a new owner]. + +(*) The "mutex has waiters" bit gets set to take the lock. If the lock +doesn't already have an owner, this bit is quickly cleared if there are +no waiters. So this is a transitional state to synchronize with looking +at the owner field of the mutex and the mutex owner releasing the lock. |