Re: [RFC PATCH v1 0/4] Reduce cost of ptep_get_lockless on arm64

[David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>]

On 23.04.24 12:15, Ryan Roberts wrote:
> Hi David,
> 
> Sorry for the slow reply on this; its was due to a combination of thinking a bit
> more about the options here and being out on holiday.
> 

No worries, there are things more important in life than 
ptep_get_lockless() :D

>> (1) seems like the easiest thing to do.
> 
> Yes, I'm very much in favour of easy.
> 
>>
>>>
>>> Perhaps its useful to enumerate why we dislike the current ptep_get_lockless()?
>>
>> Well, you sent that patch series with "that aims to reduce the cost and
>> complexity of ptep_get_lockless() for arm64". (2) and (3) would achieve that. :)
> 
> Touche! I'd half forgotten that we were having this conversation in the context
> of this series!
> 
> I guess your ptep_get_gup_fast() approach is very similar to
> ptep_get_lockless_norecency()... So we are back to the beginning :)

Except that it would be limited to GUP-fast :)

> 
> But ultimately I've come to the conclusion that it is easy to reason about the
> current arm64 ptep_get_lockless() implementation and see that its correct. The
> other options both have their drawbacks.

Yes.

> 
> Yes, there is a loop in the current implementation that would be nice to get rid
> of, but I don't think it is really any worse than the cmpxchg loops we already
> have in other helpers.
> 
> I'm not planning to persue this any further. Thanks for the useful discussion
> (as always).

Make sense to me. let's leave it as is for the time being. (and also see 
if a GUP-fast user that needs precise dirty/accessed actually gets real)

-- 
Cheers,

David / dhildenb