[dpdk-dev] [EXT] [PATCH v3 6/6] spinlock: ticket based to improve fairness

[Gavin Hu (Arm Technology China)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jerin Jacob Kollanukkaran <jerinj at marvell.com>
> Sent: Friday, December 28, 2018 12:39 PM
> To: stephen at networkplumber.org
> Cc: david.marchand at redhat.com; chaozhu at linux.vnet.ibm.com; nd
> <nd at arm.com>; bruce.richardson at intel.com; thomas at monjalon.net;
> dev at dpdk.org; Joyce Kong (Arm Technology China) <Joyce.Kong at arm.com>;
> hemant.agrawal at nxp.com; Honnappa Nagarahalli
> <Honnappa.Nagarahalli at arm.com>; Gavin Hu (Arm Technology China)
> <Gavin.Hu at arm.com>
> Subject: Re: [EXT] [PATCH v3 6/6] spinlock: ticket based to improve fairness
> 
> On Thu, 2018-12-27 at 15:41 -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> > On Thu, 27 Dec 2018 12:08:26 +0000
> > Jerin Jacob Kollanukkaran <jerinj at marvell.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Thu, 2018-12-27 at 10:05 +0000, Gavin Hu (Arm Technology China)
> > > wrote:
> > > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > > From: Jerin Jacob Kollanukkaran <jerinj at marvell.com>
> > > > > Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2018 2:58 PM
> > > > > To: Gavin Hu (Arm Technology China) <Gavin.Hu at arm.com>;
> > > > > dev at dpdk.org
> > > > > Cc: david.marchand at redhat.com; chaozhu at linux.vnet.ibm.com; nd
> > > > > <nd at arm.com>; bruce.richardson at intel.com; thomas at monjalon.net;
> > > > > Joyce
> > > > > Kong (Arm Technology China) <Joyce.Kong at arm.com>;
> > > > > hemant.agrawal at nxp.com; stephen at networkplumber.org; Honnappa
> > > > > Nagarahalli <Honnappa.Nagarahalli at arm.com>
> > > > > Subject: Re: [EXT] [PATCH v3 6/6] spinlock: ticket based to
> > > > > improve
> > > > > fairness
> > > > >
> > > > > On Thu, 2018-12-27 at 12:13 +0800, Gavin Hu wrote:
> > > > > > -----------------------------------------------------------
> > > > > > ----
> > > > > > ----
> > > > > > ---
> > > > > > From: Joyce Kong <joyce.kong at arm.com>
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The old implementation is unfair, some threads may take locks
> > > > > > aggressively
> > > > >
> > > > > I think, one issue here is x86 and ppc follows traditional
> > > > > spinlock
> > > > > and
> > > > > arm64 will be following ticket lock for spinlock
> > > > > implementation.
> > > > > This would change application behaviour on arm64 compared to
> > > > > x86
> > > > > and
> > > > > ppc.
> > > > >
> > > > > How about having a separate API for ticket lock? That would
> > > > > give,
> > > > > # application choice to use the locking strategy
> > > > > # application behaviour will be same across all arch.
> > > >
> > > > Ok, will do in v4 to have a new named rte_ticket_spinlock API.
> > >
> > > I would prefer rte_ticketlock_[lock/unlock/trylock/is_locked] name
> > > instead of rte_ticket_spinlock_lock etc to reduce the length of the
> > > API.
> >
> > NAK to adding new API for this.
> >
> > I want the best possible locks for all applications and all
> > architectures.
> > These should be called spinlock so there is no requirement for
> > application
> > to change to get better performance. Why not just implement the best
> > algorithm
> > across the board. Yes, this means collaboration or working on the
> > other guys
> > architecture.
> 
> Then 6/6 patch needs to put on hold if every arch needs to make ticket
> lock as default spinlock lock strategy.
> 
> How about following to make forward progress:
> 1) Introduce rte_ticketlock_[lock/unlock/trylock/is_locked] API now as
> experimental with default implementation
> 2) Provide a time line to switch every arch for optimized ticketlock
> implementation if needed.
> 3) Switch rte_ticketlock_ as rte_spinlock_ API.
> 4) Keep old version of spinlock as new API if some application does not
> need fairness between threads at the cost of light weight spinlock
> implementation.

We will rework the patches following this proposal, and let's switch over at some point of later.
 
> I don't want arm64 to behave differently than other arch(s).

This is the generic implementation, x86 and ppc can choose also by setting CONFIG_RTE_FORCE_INTRINSICS=y  in the config file.
The arch specific implementation is instruction level based, arm will implement this also, they are not ticket based.
>