Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 22 Aug 2018 08:34:35 +0200
From:      Sebastian Huber <sebastian.huber@embedded-brains.de>
To:        FreeBSD <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>
Cc:        Matthew Macy <mmacy@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: epoch(9) background information?
Message-ID:  <fc088eb4-f306-674c-7404-ebe17a60a5f8@embedded-brains.de>
In-Reply-To: <CALX0vxBAN6nckuAnYR3_mOfwbCjJCjHGuuOFh9njpxO%2BGUzo3w@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <db397431-2c4c-64de-634a-20f38ce6a60e@embedded-brains.de> <CALX0vxBAN6nckuAnYR3_mOfwbCjJCjHGuuOFh9njpxO%2BGUzo3w@mail.gmail.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 21/08/18 15:38, Jacques Fourie wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 8:33 AM, Sebastian Huber=20
> <sebastian.huber@embedded-brains.de=20
> <mailto:sebastian.huber@embedded-brains.de>> wrote:
>
>     Hello,
>
>     I update currently a port of the FreeBSD network stack, etc. to
>     the real-time operating system RTEMS from the head version at
>     2017-04-04 to the head version of today. I noticed that some
>     read-write locks are replaced by a relatively new stuff called
>     EPOCH(9). Is there some background information available for this?
>     The man page is a bit vague and searching for something named
>     epoch on the internet is not really great. For example, what is
>     the motivation for this change? How is this related to
>     read-copy-update (RCU)?
>
>     --=20
>     Sebastian Huber, embedded brains GmbH
>
>     Address : Dornierstr. 4, D-82178 Puchheim, Germany
>     <https://maps.google.com/?q=3DDornierstr.+4,+D-82178+Puchheim,+Germ=
any&entry=3Dgmail&source=3Dg>
>     Phone=C2=A0 =C2=A0: +49 89 189 47 41-16
>     Fax=C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0: +49 89 189 47 41-09
>     E-Mail=C2=A0 : sebastian.huber@embedded-brains.de
>     <mailto:sebastian.huber@embedded-brains.de>
>     PGP=C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0: Public key available on request.
>
>     Diese Nachricht ist keine gesch=C3=A4ftliche Mitteilung im Sinne de=
s EHUG.
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org <mailto:freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>
>     mailing list
>     https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers
>     <https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers>;
>     To unsubscribe, send any mail to
>     "freebsd-hackers-unsubscribe@freebsd.org
>     <mailto:freebsd-hackers-unsubscribe@freebsd.org>"
>
>
> Additional information is available here :=20
> http://concurrencykit.org/presentations/ebr.pdf=20
> <http://concurrencykit.org/presentations/ebr.pdf>. The way I=20
> understand it is that it is mostly used in place of read locks to=20
> provide liveness guarantees without using atomics. Additional detail=20
> is available in the commit messages. As an example see r333813 for=20
> some performance data.
>

Thanks, for the reference. The "epoch reclamation" are good keywords to=20
find more information.

What is the right mailing list to ask questions about the epoch=20
implementation of the FreeBSD kernel?

To support this machinery in RTEMS is a bit difficult (in particular=20
EPOCH_LOCKED). Since RTEMS is supposed to be a real-time operating=20
system it supports only fixed-priority and job-level fixed priority=20
(EDF) schedulers. To allow some scaling to larger SMP systems it=20
supports clustered scheduling together with the mutual exclusion locking=20
protocols MrsP (http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~burns/MRSPpaper.pdf) and=20
OMIP (http://www.mpi-sws.org/~bbb/papers/pdf/ecrts13b.pdf). This makes=20
the thread pinning hard to implement (which is very easy to support in=20
FreeBSD). The locking protocols may temporarily move a thread which owns=20
a mutex to a foreign scheduler instance, e.g. a thread which wants to=20
obtain the mutex helps the owner to make progress if it was pre-empted=20
in its home scheduler instance. Due to a timeout of the helper the owner=20
may loose the right to execute in the foreign scheduler instance. This=20
would make it impossible to fulfil the processor pinning constraint=20
(e.g. the thread priority in the foreign scheduler instance is undefined)=
.

It would save me a lot of trouble if I could assume that EPOCH_LOCKED is=20
an exotic feature which is unlikely to get used in FreeBSD.

--=20
Sebastian Huber, embedded brains GmbH

Address : Dornierstr. 4, D-82178 Puchheim, Germany
Phone   : +49 89 189 47 41-16
Fax     : +49 89 189 47 41-09
E-Mail  : sebastian.huber@embedded-brains.de
PGP     : Public key available on request.

Diese Nachricht ist keine gesch=C3=A4ftliche Mitteilung im Sinne des EHUG=
.




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?fc088eb4-f306-674c-7404-ebe17a60a5f8>