RTE lock

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2024 21:18:20 +0100
Mattias Rönnblom <hofors at lysator.liu.se> wrote:

> Shouldn't we have a DPDK-native mutex API, rather than using direct 
> POSIX mutex lock calls?
> 
> There are two reasons for this, as I see it
> 1) more cleanly support non-POSIX operating system (i.e., Microsoft 
> Windows).
> 2) to discourage mechanical use of spinlocks in places where a regular 
> mutex lock is more appropriate.
> 
> I think (and hope) DPDK developers will tend to pick DPDK-native rather 
> than other APIs as their first choice.
> 
> For locks, they go for spinlocks, even in control (non-fast 
> path/non-packet processing) code paths (e.g., calls made by the typical 
> non-EAL thread).
> 
> Using spinlocks to synchronize threads that may be preempted aren't 
> great idea.

Maybe a wrapper, but actually implementing mutex with flock is complicated.