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Date:      Mon, 3 Jun 2013 22:43:19 -0600
From:      Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
To:        Adrian Chadd <adrian@freebsd.org>
Cc:        Ed Schouten <ed@80386.nl>, freebsd-mips@freebsd.org, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Kernelspace C11 atomics for MIPS
Message-ID:  <A4020A8F-51DD-4C1F-902B-74C9F3C167D6@bsdimp.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAJ-Vmo=vNbT9majPCZ8ugzPsNzh46DTD4mMDX-cuxx9Og91ptw@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <CAJOYFBD502MYbkVR2hnVDTYWOvOUr15=OPyjotNvv%2BZ09vQ1OQ@mail.gmail.com> <D02AF210-5129-40AB-9481-3F0A44575E98@bsdimp.com> <CAJ-Vmo=vNbT9majPCZ8ugzPsNzh46DTD4mMDX-cuxx9Og91ptw@mail.gmail.com>

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On Jun 3, 2013, at 8:45 PM, Adrian Chadd wrote:

> Speaking of this; any idea why the SYNC operators have 8 NOPs =
following them?

Yes, that's the exact issue that I've had with them, but have never had =
time to sort it out...

Warner

> I noticed that when going through disassemblies of various mips24k .o =
files.
>=20
>=20
>=20
> Adrian
>=20
> On 3 June 2013 10:53, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>>=20
>> On Jun 3, 2013, at 8:04 AM, Ed Schouten wrote:
>>=20
>>> Hi,
>>>=20
>>> As of r251230, it should be possible to use C11 atomics in
>>> kernelspace, by including <sys/stdatomic.h>! Even when not using =
Clang
>>> (but GCC 4.2), it is possible to use quite a large portion of the =
API.
>>> A couple of limitations:
>>>=20
>>> - The memory order argument is simply ignored, making all the calls =
do
>>> a full memory barrier.
>>> - At least Clang allows you to do arithmetic on C11 atomics directly
>>> (e.g. "a +=3D 5" =3D=3D "atomic_fetch_add(&a, 5)"), which is of =
course not
>>> possible to mimick.
>>> - The atomic functions only work on 1,2,4,8-byte types, which is
>>> probably a good thing.
>>>=20
>>> Amazingly, it turns out that it most of the architectures, with the
>>> exception of ARM and MIPS. To make MIPS work, we need to implement
>>> some of the __sync_* functions that are described here:
>>>=20
>>> http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.1.2/gcc/Atomic-Builtins.html
>>>=20
>>> Some time ago I already added some of these functions to our
>>> libcompiler-rt in userspace, to make atomics work there.
>>> Unfortunately, these functions were quite horribly implemented, as I
>>> tried to build them on top of <machine/atomic.h>, which is far from
>>> trivial/efficient. It is also restricted to 4 and 8-byte types. =
That's
>>> why I thought: why not spend some time learning MIPS assembly and
>>> write some decent implementations for these functions?
>>>=20
>>> The result:
>>>=20
>>> http://80386.nl/pub/mips-stdatomic.txt
>>=20
>> The number of necessary syncs varies by processor type. There's also =
newer synchronization instructions that make this as efficient as =
possible for all mips32r2 and mips64r2-based machines. Older Caviums, at =
least and maybe newer ones, also have their own variants. What you have =
will mostly work for the processors we have to support. mips_sync could =
therefore be better. Doing it before AND after seems like overkill as =
well. Since sync is a fairly performance killing assembler instruction, =
how would you feel about allowing optimizations?
>>=20
>> This is my biggest single concern about the patch, but it also my =
current biggest concern about the MIPS atomic operators in general.
>>=20
>>> For now, please focus on sys/mips/mips/stdatomic.c. It implements =
all
>>> the __sync_* functions called by <stdatomic.h> for 1, 2, 4 and 8 =
byte
>>> types. There is some testing code in there as well, which can be
>>> ignored. This code disassembles to the following:
>>>=20
>>> http://80386.nl/pub/mips-stdatomic-disasm.txt
>>>=20
>>> As I don't own a MIPS system myself, I was thinking about tinkering =
a
>>> bit with qemu to see whether these functions work properly. My
>>> questions are:
>>>=20
>>> - Does anyone have any comments on the C code and/or the machine =
code
>>> generated? Are there some nifty tricks I can apply to make the =
machine
>>> code more efficient that I am unaware o?
>>> - Is there anyone interested in testing this code a bit more
>>> thoroughly on physical hardware?
>>> - Would anyone mind if I committed this to HEAD?
>>=20
>> I have some cavium gear I can easily test on, and some other stuff I =
can less-easily test on.
>>=20
>> It wouldn't be horrible to commit to head, but it would affect =
performance in many places.
>>=20
>> Don't commit the kern/bla.c standard change to conf/files, it looks =
to be bogus :)
>>=20
>> Warner
>>=20
>> _______________________________________________
>> freebsd-mips@freebsd.org mailing list
>> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-mips
>> To unsubscribe, send any mail to =
"freebsd-mips-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"




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