[PATCH 2/3] Mutex: Only read while spinning

[Adhemerval Zanella <adhemerval dot zanella at linaro dot org>]

On 30/03/2018 04:14, Kemi Wang wrote:
> The pthread adaptive spin mutex spins on the lock for a while before going
> to a sleep. While the lock is contended and we need to wait, going straight
> back to LLL_MUTEX_TRYLOCK(cmpxchg) is not a good idea on many targets as
> that will force expensive memory synchronization among processors and
> penalize other running threads. For example, it constantly floods the
> system with "read for ownership" requests, which are much more expensive to
> process than a single read. Thus, we only use MO read until we observe the
> lock to not be acquired anymore, as suggusted by Andi Kleen.
> 
> Test machine:
> 2-sockets Skylake paltform, 112 cores with 62G RAM
> 
> Test case: Contended pthread adaptive spin mutex with global update
> each thread of the workload does:
> a) Lock the mutex (adaptive spin type)
> b) Globle variable increment
> c) Unlock the mutex
> in a loop until timeout, and the main thread reports the total iteration
> number of all the threads in one second.
> 
> This test case is as same as Will-it-scale.pthread_mutex3 except mutex type is
> modified to PTHREAD_MUTEX_ADAPTIVE_NP.
> github: https://github.com/antonblanchard/will-it-scale.git
> 
> nr_threads      base         head(SPIN_COUNT=10)  head(SPIN_COUNT=1000)
> 1               51644585        51307573(-0.7%)    51323778(-0.6%)
> 2               7914789         10011301(+26.5%)   9867343(+24.7%)
> 7               1687620         4224135(+150.3%)   3430504(+103.3%)
> 14              1026555         3784957(+268.7%)   1843458(+79.6%)
> 28              962001          2886885(+200.1%)   681965(-29.1%)
> 56              883770          2740755(+210.1%)   364879(-58.7%)
> 112             1150589         2707089(+135.3%)   415261(-63.9%)

In pthread_mutex3 it is basically more updates in a global variable synchronized
with a mutex, so if I am reading correct the benchmark, a higher value means
less contention. I also assume you use the 'threads' value in this table.

I checked on a 64 cores aarch64 machine to see what kind of improvement, if
any; one would get with this change:

nr_threads      base            head(SPIN_COUNT=10)   head(SPIN_COUNT=1000)
1               27566206        28778254 (4.211680)   28778467 (4.212389)
2               8498813         7777589 (-9.273105)   7806043 (-8.874791)
7               5019434         2869629 (-74.915782)  3307812 (-51.744839)
14              4379155         2906255 (-50.680343)  2825041 (-55.012087)
28              4397464         3261094 (-34.846282)  3259486 (-34.912805)
56              4020956         3898386 (-3.144122)   4038505 (0.434542)

So I think this change should be platform-specific.

> 
> Suggested-by: Andi Kleen <andi.kleen@intel.com>
> Signed-off-by: Kemi Wang <kemi.wang@intel.com>
> ---
>  nptl/pthread_mutex_lock.c | 23 +++++++++++++++--------
>  1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/nptl/pthread_mutex_lock.c b/nptl/pthread_mutex_lock.c
> index 1519c14..c3aca93 100644
> --- a/nptl/pthread_mutex_lock.c
> +++ b/nptl/pthread_mutex_lock.c
> @@ -26,6 +26,7 @@
>  #include <atomic.h>
>  #include <lowlevellock.h>
>  #include <stap-probe.h>
> +#include <mutex-conf.h>
>  
>  #ifndef lll_lock_elision
>  #define lll_lock_elision(lock, try_lock, private)	({ \
> @@ -124,16 +125,22 @@ __pthread_mutex_lock (pthread_mutex_t *mutex)
>        if (LLL_MUTEX_TRYLOCK (mutex) != 0)
>  	{
>  	  int cnt = 0;
> -	  int max_cnt = MIN (MAX_ADAPTIVE_COUNT,
> -			     mutex->__data.__spins * 2 + 10);
> +	  int max_cnt = MIN (__mutex_aconf.spin_count,
> +			mutex->__data.__spins * 2 + 100);
>  	  do
>  	    {
> -	      if (cnt++ >= max_cnt)
> -		{
> -		  LLL_MUTEX_LOCK (mutex);
> -		  break;
> -		}
> -	      atomic_spin_nop ();
> +		if (cnt >= max_cnt)
> +		  {
> +		    LLL_MUTEX_LOCK (mutex);
> +		    break;
> +		  }
> +		/* MO read while spinning */
> +		do
> +		  {
> +		    atomic_spin_nop ();
> +		  }
> +		while (atomic_load_relaxed (&mutex->__data.__lock) != 0 &&
> +			++cnt < max_cnt);
>  	    }
>  	  while (LLL_MUTEX_TRYLOCK (mutex) != 0);
>  
>