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Re: Initial messaging / message-port infrastructure is in


From: David Leimbach <leimy2k@xxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 06:54:32 -0500

Ah... I need coffee. :) Light Weight Kernel Threading perhaps? :)

On Sunday, July 20, 2003, at 6:48AM, David Leimbach wrote:

Looks interesting... I need to get my FBSD box running again so I can play with this
I suppose? [I clobbered it a few days ago :)]


Anyway.. what does LWKT mean? I somehow have missed it... I assume its an
acronym?


Dave
On Saturday, July 19, 2003, at 8:56PM, Matthew Dillon wrote:

I've committed the initial messaging/message-port infrastructure. Here
are the cvsweb links:


http://www.dragonflybsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/kern/ lwkt_msgport.c
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/sys/msgport.h
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/sys/thread.h


http://www.dragonflybsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/kern/ lwkt_msgport.c?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/sys/msgport.h? rev=HEAD&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/sys/thread.h? rev=HEAD&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup


None of it is tested yet since nothing uses it yet (though DEV is about to
start using it in a degenerate form), but I think people will be
interested in seeing all of those comments I was making about messaging
and IPIs realized by this commit.


This also shows off one of the big advantages of asynchronous IPI
messaging. The messaging and port functions do not need to obtain
any mutexes (even if there were no MP lock) even when they wind up
queueing or dequeueing something. But that isn't the only reason...
because the messaging operations are combined with scheduling ops and
one IPI will cover both the queueing and the scheduling aspects of
a message.


So right now we save at least 8 mutex equivalents with a single IPI
message:


Traditional mutex Design LWKT/IPI design

    cpu1: get_queue_mtx				cpu1: send IPIQ to target cpu
    cpu1: queue_message
    cpu1: rel_queue_mtx
    cpu1: get_sched_mtx
    cpu1: schedule_target_thread
    cpu1: rel_sched_mtx
    cpu1: (IPI the target cpu anyway
	  in case it is idle??)

    cpu2: (receive wakeup IPI??)
    cpu2: get_sched_mtx				cpu2: receive IPIQ
    cpu2: locate_scheduled_thread		cpu2: queue message
    cpu2: rel_sched_mtx				cpu2: schedule target thread
    cpu2: get_queue_mtx				cpu2: dequeue message
    cpu2: dequeue_message			cpu2: execute message function
    cpu2: rel_queue_mtx
    cpu2: execute message function		

Even if I were generous and ignored the fact that even in a mutexed
system cpu1 might want to wake up cpu2 with an IPI, the fact remains
that in a mutexed system *8* mutex operations are executed before
the message can be acted upon, and in the LWKT system *NO* mutex
operations are executed before the message can be acted upon.


The question then becomes: is the IPI latency (which costs neither cpu
any actual cycles but can take a 'long' time (e.g. 1uS)) and the IPI
interrupt overhead (on cpu2, which does eat cycles on cpu2) worth the
8 *CONTESTED* mutexes we just saved? I would say: probably.


And when you add in the other efficiencies.. for example, the fact that
lwkt_getport() and lwkt_waitport() (basically ALL message processing
involving the thread owning the message port in question) requires only
a critical section to manipulate. No mutexes, no IPIs, no nothing.


Now is it worth it? I think so!

-Matt






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