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authorLibravatar Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2023-02-21 18:24:12 -0800
committerLibravatar Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2023-02-21 18:24:12 -0800
commit5b7c4cabbb65f5c469464da6c5f614cbd7f730f2 (patch)
treecc5c2d0a898769fd59549594fedb3ee6f84e59a0 /tools/memory-model/Documentation/simple.txt
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Merge tag 'net-next-6.3' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-nextgrafted
Pull networking updates from Jakub Kicinski: "Core: - Add dedicated kmem_cache for typical/small skb->head, avoid having to access struct page at kfree time, and improve memory use. - Introduce sysctl to set default RPS configuration for new netdevs. - Define Netlink protocol specification format which can be used to describe messages used by each family and auto-generate parsers. Add tools for generating kernel data structures and uAPI headers. - Expose all net/core sysctls inside netns. - Remove 4s sleep in netpoll if carrier is instantly detected on boot. - Add configurable limit of MDB entries per port, and port-vlan. - Continue populating drop reasons throughout the stack. - Retire a handful of legacy Qdiscs and classifiers. Protocols: - Support IPv4 big TCP (TSO frames larger than 64kB). - Add IP_LOCAL_PORT_RANGE socket option, to control local port range on socket by socket basis. - Track and report in procfs number of MPTCP sockets used. - Support mixing IPv4 and IPv6 flows in the in-kernel MPTCP path manager. - IPv6: don't check net.ipv6.route.max_size and rely on garbage collection to free memory (similarly to IPv4). - Support Penultimate Segment Pop (PSP) flavor in SRv6 (RFC8986). - ICMP: add per-rate limit counters. - Add support for user scanning requests in ieee802154. - Remove static WEP support. - Support minimal Wi-Fi 7 Extremely High Throughput (EHT) rate reporting. - WiFi 7 EHT channel puncturing support (client & AP). BPF: - Add a rbtree data structure following the "next-gen data structure" precedent set by recently added linked list, that is, by using kfunc + kptr instead of adding a new BPF map type. - Expose XDP hints via kfuncs with initial support for RX hash and timestamp metadata. - Add BPF_F_NO_TUNNEL_KEY extension to bpf_skb_set_tunnel_key to better support decap on GRE tunnel devices not operating in collect metadata. - Improve x86 JIT's codegen for PROBE_MEM runtime error checks. - Remove the need for trace_printk_lock for bpf_trace_printk and bpf_trace_vprintk helpers. - Extend libbpf's bpf_tracing.h support for tracing arguments of kprobes/uprobes and syscall as a special case. - Significantly reduce the search time for module symbols by livepatch and BPF. - Enable cpumasks to be used as kptrs, which is useful for tracing programs tracking which tasks end up running on which CPUs in different time intervals. - Add support for BPF trampoline on s390x and riscv64. - Add capability to export the XDP features supported by the NIC. - Add __bpf_kfunc tag for marking kernel functions as kfuncs. - Add cgroup.memory=nobpf kernel parameter option to disable BPF memory accounting for container environments. Netfilter: - Remove the CLUSTERIP target. It has been marked as obsolete for years, and we still have WARN splats wrt races of the out-of-band /proc interface installed by this target. - Add 'destroy' commands to nf_tables. They are identical to the existing 'delete' commands, but do not return an error if the referenced object (set, chain, rule...) did not exist. Driver API: - Improve cpumask_local_spread() locality to help NICs set the right IRQ affinity on AMD platforms. - Separate C22 and C45 MDIO bus transactions more clearly. - Introduce new DCB table to control DSCP rewrite on egress. - Support configuration of Physical Layer Collision Avoidance (PLCA) Reconciliation Sublayer (RS) (802.3cg-2019). Modern version of shared medium Ethernet. - Support for MAC Merge layer (IEEE 802.3-2018 clause 99). Allowing preemption of low priority frames by high priority frames. - Add support for controlling MACSec offload using netlink SET. - Rework devlink instance refcounts to allow registration and de-registration under the instance lock. Split the code into multiple files, drop some of the unnecessarily granular locks and factor out common parts of netlink operation handling. - Add TX frame aggregation parameters (for USB drivers). - Add a new attr TCA_EXT_WARN_MSG to report TC (offload) warning messages with notifications for debug. - Allow offloading of UDP NEW connections via act_ct. - Add support for per action HW stats in TC. - Support hardware miss to TC action (continue processing in SW from a specific point in the action chain). - Warn if old Wireless Extension user space interface is used with modern cfg80211/mac80211 drivers. Do not support Wireless Extensions for Wi-Fi 7 devices at all. Everyone should switch to using nl80211 interface instead. - Improve the CAN bit timing configuration. Use extack to return error messages directly to user space, update the SJW handling, including the definition of a new default value that will benefit CAN-FD controllers, by increasing their oscillator tolerance. New hardware / drivers: - Ethernet: - nVidia BlueField-3 support (control traffic driver) - Ethernet support for imx93 SoCs - Motorcomm yt8531 gigabit Ethernet PHY - onsemi NCN26000 10BASE-T1S PHY (with support for PLCA) - Microchip LAN8841 PHY (incl. cable diagnostics and PTP) - Amlogic gxl MDIO mux - WiFi: - RealTek RTL8188EU (rtl8xxxu) - Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 devices (ath12k) - CAN: - Renesas R-Car V4H Drivers: - Bluetooth: - Set Per Platform Antenna Gain (PPAG) for Intel controllers. - Ethernet NICs: - Intel (1G, igc): - support TSN / Qbv / packet scheduling features of i226 model - Intel (100G, ice): - use GNSS subsystem instead of TTY - multi-buffer XDP support - extend support for GPIO pins to E823 devices - nVidia/Mellanox: - update the shared buffer configuration on PFC commands - implement PTP adjphase function for HW offset control - TC support for Geneve and GRE with VF tunnel offload - more efficient crypto key management method - multi-port eswitch support - Netronome/Corigine: - add DCB IEEE support - support IPsec offloading for NFP3800 - Freescale/NXP (enetc): - support XDP_REDIRECT for XDP non-linear buffers - improve reconfig, avoid link flap and waiting for idle - support MAC Merge layer - Other NICs: - sfc/ef100: add basic devlink support for ef100 - ionic: rx_push mode operation (writing descriptors via MMIO) - bnxt: use the auxiliary bus abstraction for RDMA - r8169: disable ASPM and reset bus in case of tx timeout - cpsw: support QSGMII mode for J721e CPSW9G - cpts: support pulse-per-second output - ngbe: add an mdio bus driver - usbnet: optimize usbnet_bh() by avoiding unnecessary queuing - r8152: handle devices with FW with NCM support - amd-xgbe: support 10Mbps, 2.5GbE speeds and rx-adaptation - virtio-net: support multi buffer XDP - virtio/vsock: replace virtio_vsock_pkt with sk_buff - tsnep: XDP support - Ethernet high-speed switches: - nVidia/Mellanox (mlxsw): - add support for latency TLV (in FW control messages) - Microchip (sparx5): - separate explicit and implicit traffic forwarding rules, make the implicit rules always active - add support for egress DSCP rewrite - IS0 VCAP support (Ingress Classification) - IS2 VCAP filters (protos, L3 addrs, L4 ports, flags, ToS etc.) - ES2 VCAP support (Egress Access Control) - support for Per-Stream Filtering and Policing (802.1Q, 8.6.5.1) - Ethernet embedded switches: - Marvell (mv88e6xxx): - add MAB (port auth) offload support - enable PTP receive for mv88e6390 - NXP (ocelot): - support MAC Merge layer - support for the the vsc7512 internal copper phys - Microchip: - lan9303: convert to PHYLINK - lan966x: support TC flower filter statistics - lan937x: PTP support for KSZ9563/KSZ8563 and LAN937x - lan937x: support Credit Based Shaper configuration - ksz9477: support Energy Efficient Ethernet - other: - qca8k: convert to regmap read/write API, use bulk operations - rswitch: Improve TX timestamp accuracy - Intel WiFi (iwlwifi): - EHT (Wi-Fi 7) rate reporting - STEP equalizer support: transfer some STEP (connection to radio on platforms with integrated wifi) related parameters from the BIOS to the firmware. - Qualcomm 802.11ax WiFi (ath11k): - IPQ5018 support - Fine Timing Measurement (FTM) responder role support - channel 177 support - MediaTek WiFi (mt76): - per-PHY LED support - mt7996: EHT (Wi-Fi 7) support - Wireless Ethernet Dispatch (WED) reset support - switch to using page pool allocator - RealTek WiFi (rtw89): - support new version of Bluetooth co-existance - Mobile: - rmnet: support TX aggregation" * tag 'net-next-6.3' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-next: (1872 commits) page_pool: add a comment explaining the fragment counter usage net: ethtool: fix __ethtool_dev_mm_supported() implementation ethtool: pse-pd: Fix double word in comments xsk: add linux/vmalloc.h to xsk.c sefltests: netdevsim: wait for devlink instance after netns removal selftest: fib_tests: Always cleanup before exit net/mlx5e: Align IPsec ASO result memory to be as required by hardware net/mlx5e: TC, Set CT miss to the specific ct action instance net/mlx5e: Rename CHAIN_TO_REG to MAPPED_OBJ_TO_REG net/mlx5: Refactor tc miss handling to a single function net/mlx5: Kconfig: Make tc offload depend on tc skb extension net/sched: flower: Support hardware miss to tc action net/sched: flower: Move filter handle initialization earlier net/sched: cls_api: Support hardware miss to tc action net/sched: Rename user cookie and act cookie sfc: fix builds without CONFIG_RTC_LIB sfc: clean up some inconsistent indentings net/mlx4_en: Introduce flexible array to silence overflow warning net: lan966x: Fix possible deadlock inside PTP net/ulp: Remove redundant ->clone() test in inet_clone_ulp(). ...
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+This document provides options for those wishing to keep their
+memory-ordering lives simple, as is necessary for those whose domain
+is complex. After all, there are bugs other than memory-ordering bugs,
+and the time spent gaining memory-ordering knowledge is not available
+for gaining domain knowledge. Furthermore Linux-kernel memory model
+(LKMM) is quite complex, with subtle differences in code often having
+dramatic effects on correctness.
+
+The options near the beginning of this list are quite simple. The idea
+is not that kernel hackers don't already know about them, but rather
+that they might need the occasional reminder.
+
+Please note that this is a generic guide, and that specific subsystems
+will often have special requirements or idioms. For example, developers
+of MMIO-based device drivers will often need to use mb(), rmb(), and
+wmb(), and therefore might find smp_mb(), smp_rmb(), and smp_wmb()
+to be more natural than smp_load_acquire() and smp_store_release().
+On the other hand, those coming in from other environments will likely
+be more familiar with these last two.
+
+
+Single-threaded code
+====================
+
+In single-threaded code, there is no reordering, at least assuming
+that your toolchain and hardware are working correctly. In addition,
+it is generally a mistake to assume your code will only run in a single
+threaded context as the kernel can enter the same code path on multiple
+CPUs at the same time. One important exception is a function that makes
+no external data references.
+
+In the general case, you will need to take explicit steps to ensure that
+your code really is executed within a single thread that does not access
+shared variables. A simple way to achieve this is to define a global lock
+that you acquire at the beginning of your code and release at the end,
+taking care to ensure that all references to your code's shared data are
+also carried out under that same lock. Because only one thread can hold
+this lock at a given time, your code will be executed single-threaded.
+This approach is called "code locking".
+
+Code locking can severely limit both performance and scalability, so it
+should be used with caution, and only on code paths that execute rarely.
+After all, a huge amount of effort was required to remove the Linux
+kernel's old "Big Kernel Lock", so let's please be very careful about
+adding new "little kernel locks".
+
+One of the advantages of locking is that, in happy contrast with the
+year 1981, almost all kernel developers are very familiar with locking.
+The Linux kernel's lockdep (CONFIG_PROVE_LOCKING=y) is very helpful with
+the formerly feared deadlock scenarios.
+
+Please use the standard locking primitives provided by the kernel rather
+than rolling your own. For one thing, the standard primitives interact
+properly with lockdep. For another thing, these primitives have been
+tuned to deal better with high contention. And for one final thing, it is
+surprisingly hard to correctly code production-quality lock acquisition
+and release functions. After all, even simple non-production-quality
+locking functions must carefully prevent both the CPU and the compiler
+from moving code in either direction across the locking function.
+
+Despite the scalability limitations of single-threaded code, RCU
+takes this approach for much of its grace-period processing and also
+for early-boot operation. The reason RCU is able to scale despite
+single-threaded grace-period processing is use of batching, where all
+updates that accumulated during one grace period are handled by the
+next one. In other words, slowing down grace-period processing makes
+it more efficient. Nor is RCU unique: Similar batching optimizations
+are used in many I/O operations.
+
+
+Packaged code
+=============
+
+Even if performance and scalability concerns prevent your code from
+being completely single-threaded, it is often possible to use library
+functions that handle the concurrency nearly or entirely on their own.
+This approach delegates any LKMM worries to the library maintainer.
+
+In the kernel, what is the "library"? Quite a bit. It includes the
+contents of the lib/ directory, much of the include/linux/ directory along
+with a lot of other heavily used APIs. But heavily used examples include
+the list macros (for example, include/linux/{,rcu}list.h), workqueues,
+smp_call_function(), and the various hash tables and search trees.
+
+
+Data locking
+============
+
+With code locking, we use single-threaded code execution to guarantee
+serialized access to the data that the code is accessing. However,
+we can also achieve this by instead associating the lock with specific
+instances of the data structures. This creates a "critical section"
+in the code execution that will execute as though it is single threaded.
+By placing all the accesses and modifications to a shared data structure
+inside a critical section, we ensure that the execution context that
+holds the lock has exclusive access to the shared data.
+
+The poster boy for this approach is the hash table, where placing a lock
+in each hash bucket allows operations on different buckets to proceed
+concurrently. This works because the buckets do not overlap with each
+other, so that an operation on one bucket does not interfere with any
+other bucket.
+
+As the number of buckets increases, data locking scales naturally.
+In particular, if the amount of data increases with the number of CPUs,
+increasing the number of buckets as the number of CPUs increase results
+in a naturally scalable data structure.
+
+
+Per-CPU processing
+==================
+
+Partitioning processing and data over CPUs allows each CPU to take
+a single-threaded approach while providing excellent performance and
+scalability. Of course, there is no free lunch: The dark side of this
+excellence is substantially increased memory footprint.
+
+In addition, it is sometimes necessary to occasionally update some global
+view of this processing and data, in which case something like locking
+must be used to protect this global view. This is the approach taken
+by the percpu_counter infrastructure. In many cases, there are already
+generic/library variants of commonly used per-cpu constructs available.
+Please use them rather than rolling your own.
+
+RCU uses DEFINE_PER_CPU*() declaration to create a number of per-CPU
+data sets. For example, each CPU does private quiescent-state processing
+within its instance of the per-CPU rcu_data structure, and then uses data
+locking to report quiescent states up the grace-period combining tree.
+
+
+Packaged primitives: Sequence locking
+=====================================
+
+Lockless programming is considered by many to be more difficult than
+lock-based programming, but there are a few lockless design patterns that
+have been built out into an API. One of these APIs is sequence locking.
+Although this APIs can be used in extremely complex ways, there are simple
+and effective ways of using it that avoid the need to pay attention to
+memory ordering.
+
+The basic keep-things-simple rule for sequence locking is "do not write
+in read-side code". Yes, you can do writes from within sequence-locking
+readers, but it won't be so simple. For example, such writes will be
+lockless and should be idempotent.
+
+For more sophisticated use cases, LKMM can guide you, including use
+cases involving combining sequence locking with other synchronization
+primitives. (LKMM does not yet know about sequence locking, so it is
+currently necessary to open-code it in your litmus tests.)
+
+Additional information may be found in include/linux/seqlock.h.
+
+Packaged primitives: RCU
+========================
+
+Another lockless design pattern that has been baked into an API
+is RCU. The Linux kernel makes sophisticated use of RCU, but the
+keep-things-simple rules for RCU are "do not write in read-side code"
+and "do not update anything that is visible to and accessed by readers",
+and "protect updates with locking".
+
+These rules are illustrated by the functions foo_update_a() and
+foo_get_a() shown in Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.rst. Additional
+RCU usage patterns maybe found in Documentation/RCU and in the
+source code.
+
+
+Packaged primitives: Atomic operations
+======================================
+
+Back in the day, the Linux kernel had three types of atomic operations:
+
+1. Initialization and read-out, such as atomic_set() and atomic_read().
+
+2. Operations that did not return a value and provided no ordering,
+ such as atomic_inc() and atomic_dec().
+
+3. Operations that returned a value and provided full ordering, such as
+ atomic_add_return() and atomic_dec_and_test(). Note that some
+ value-returning operations provide full ordering only conditionally.
+ For example, cmpxchg() provides ordering only upon success.
+
+More recent kernels have operations that return a value but do not
+provide full ordering. These are flagged with either a _relaxed()
+suffix (providing no ordering), or an _acquire() or _release() suffix
+(providing limited ordering).
+
+Additional information may be found in these files:
+
+Documentation/atomic_t.txt
+Documentation/atomic_bitops.txt
+Documentation/core-api/refcount-vs-atomic.rst
+
+Reading code using these primitives is often also quite helpful.
+
+
+Lockless, fully ordered
+=======================
+
+When using locking, there often comes a time when it is necessary
+to access some variable or another without holding the data lock
+that serializes access to that variable.
+
+If you want to keep things simple, use the initialization and read-out
+operations from the previous section only when there are no racing
+accesses. Otherwise, use only fully ordered operations when accessing
+or modifying the variable. This approach guarantees that code prior
+to a given access to that variable will be seen by all CPUs has having
+happened before any code following any later access to that same variable.
+
+Please note that per-CPU functions are not atomic operations and
+hence they do not provide any ordering guarantees at all.
+
+If the lockless accesses are frequently executed reads that are used
+only for heuristics, or if they are frequently executed writes that
+are used only for statistics, please see the next section.
+
+
+Lockless statistics and heuristics
+==================================
+
+Unordered primitives such as atomic_read(), atomic_set(), READ_ONCE(), and
+WRITE_ONCE() can safely be used in some cases. These primitives provide
+no ordering, but they do prevent the compiler from carrying out a number
+of destructive optimizations (for which please see the next section).
+One example use for these primitives is statistics, such as per-CPU
+counters exemplified by the rt_cache_stat structure's routing-cache
+statistics counters. Another example use case is heuristics, such as
+the jiffies_till_first_fqs and jiffies_till_next_fqs kernel parameters
+controlling how often RCU scans for idle CPUs.
+
+But be careful. "Unordered" really does mean "unordered". It is all
+too easy to assume ordering, and this assumption must be avoided when
+using these primitives.
+
+
+Don't let the compiler trip you up
+==================================
+
+It can be quite tempting to use plain C-language accesses for lockless
+loads from and stores to shared variables. Although this is both
+possible and quite common in the Linux kernel, it does require a
+surprising amount of analysis, care, and knowledge about the compiler.
+Yes, some decades ago it was not unfair to consider a C compiler to be
+an assembler with added syntax and better portability, but the advent of
+sophisticated optimizing compilers mean that those days are long gone.
+Today's optimizing compilers can profoundly rewrite your code during the
+translation process, and have long been ready, willing, and able to do so.
+
+Therefore, if you really need to use C-language assignments instead of
+READ_ONCE(), WRITE_ONCE(), and so on, you will need to have a very good
+understanding of both the C standard and your compiler. Here are some
+introductory references and some tooling to start you on this noble quest:
+
+Who's afraid of a big bad optimizing compiler?
+ https://lwn.net/Articles/793253/
+Calibrating your fear of big bad optimizing compilers
+ https://lwn.net/Articles/799218/
+Concurrency bugs should fear the big bad data-race detector (part 1)
+ https://lwn.net/Articles/816850/
+Concurrency bugs should fear the big bad data-race detector (part 2)
+ https://lwn.net/Articles/816854/
+
+
+More complex use cases
+======================
+
+If the alternatives above do not do what you need, please look at the
+recipes-pairs.txt file to peel off the next layer of the memory-ordering
+onion.