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SubjectRe: [RFC PATCH for 4.17 02/21] rseq: Introduce restartable sequences system call (v12)
On Sun, 1 Apr 2018, Alan Cox wrote:

> > Restartable sequences are atomic with respect to preemption
> > (making it atomic with respect to other threads running on the
> > same CPU), as well as signal delivery (user-space execution
> > contexts nested over the same thread).
>
> CPU generally means 'big lump with legs on it'. You are not atomic to the
> same CPU, because that CPU may have 30+ cores with 8 threads per core.
>
> It could do with some better terminology (hardware thread, CPU context ?)

Well we call it a "CPU" in the scheduler context I think. We could use
better terminology throughout the kernel tools and source.

Hardware Execution Context?

> > In a typical usage scenario, the thread registering the rseq
> > structure will be performing loads and stores from/to that
> > structure. It is however also allowed to read that structure
> > from other threads. The rseq field updates performed by the
> > kernel provide relaxed atomicity semantics, which guarantee
> > that other threads performing relaxed atomic reads of the cpu
> > number cache will always observe a consistent value.
>
> So what happens to your API if the kernel atomics get improved ? You are
> effectively exporting rseq behaviour from private to public.

There is already a pretty complex coherency model guiding kernel atomics.
Improvements/changes to that are difficult and the effect will ripple
throughout the kernel. So I would suggest that these areas of the kernel
are pretty "petrified" (or written in stone).

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