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author | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 |
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committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 |
commit | 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 (patch) | |
tree | 0bba044c4ce775e45a88a51686b5d9f90697ea9d /Documentation/RCU/RTFP.txt | |
download | kernel_samsung_crespo-1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2.zip kernel_samsung_crespo-1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2.tar.gz kernel_samsung_crespo-1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2.tar.bz2 |
Linux-2.6.12-rc2
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.
Let it rip!
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/RCU/RTFP.txt')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/RCU/RTFP.txt | 387 |
1 files changed, 387 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/RTFP.txt b/Documentation/RCU/RTFP.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..12250b3 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/RCU/RTFP.txt @@ -0,0 +1,387 @@ +Read the F-ing Papers! + + +This document describes RCU-related publications, and is followed by +the corresponding bibtex entries. + +The first thing resembling RCU was published in 1980, when Kung and Lehman +[Kung80] recommended use of a garbage collector to defer destruction +of nodes in a parallel binary search tree in order to simplify its +implementation. This works well in environments that have garbage +collectors, but current production garbage collectors incur significant +read-side overhead. + +In 1982, Manber and Ladner [Manber82,Manber84] recommended deferring +destruction until all threads running at that time have terminated, again +for a parallel binary search tree. This approach works well in systems +with short-lived threads, such as the K42 research operating system. +However, Linux has long-lived tasks, so more is needed. + +In 1986, Hennessy, Osisek, and Seigh [Hennessy89] introduced passive +serialization, which is an RCU-like mechanism that relies on the presence +of "quiescent states" in the VM/XA hypervisor that are guaranteed not +to be referencing the data structure. However, this mechanism was not +optimized for modern computer systems, which is not surprising given +that these overheads were not so expensive in the mid-80s. Nonetheless, +passive serialization appears to be the first deferred-destruction +mechanism to be used in production. Furthermore, the relevant patent has +lapsed, so this approach may be used in non-GPL software, if desired. +(In contrast, use of RCU is permitted only in software licensed under +GPL. Sorry!!!) + +In 1990, Pugh [Pugh90] noted that explicitly tracking which threads +were reading a given data structure permitted deferred free to operate +in the presence of non-terminating threads. However, this explicit +tracking imposes significant read-side overhead, which is undesirable +in read-mostly situations. This algorithm does take pains to avoid +write-side contention and parallelize the other write-side overheads by +providing a fine-grained locking design, however, it would be interesting +to see how much of the performance advantage reported in 1990 remains +in 2004. + +At about this same time, Adams [Adams91] described ``chaotic relaxation'', +where the normal barriers between successive iterations of convergent +numerical algorithms are relaxed, so that iteration $n$ might use +data from iteration $n-1$ or even $n-2$. This introduces error, +which typically slows convergence and thus increases the number of +iterations required. However, this increase is sometimes more than made +up for by a reduction in the number of expensive barrier operations, +which are otherwise required to synchronize the threads at the end +of each iteration. Unfortunately, chaotic relaxation requires highly +structured data, such as the matrices used in scientific programs, and +is thus inapplicable to most data structures in operating-system kernels. + +In 1993, Jacobson [Jacobson93] verbally described what is perhaps the +simplest deferred-free technique: simply waiting a fixed amount of time +before freeing blocks awaiting deferred free. Jacobson did not describe +any write-side changes he might have made in this work using SGI's Irix +kernel. Aju John published a similar technique in 1995 [AjuJohn95]. +This works well if there is a well-defined upper bound on the length of +time that reading threads can hold references, as there might well be in +hard real-time systems. However, if this time is exceeded, perhaps due +to preemption, excessive interrupts, or larger-than-anticipated load, +memory corruption can ensue, with no reasonable means of diagnosis. +Jacobson's technique is therefore inappropriate for use in production +operating-system kernels, except when such kernels can provide hard +real-time response guarantees for all operations. + +Also in 1995, Pu et al. [Pu95a] applied a technique similar to that of Pugh's +read-side-tracking to permit replugging of algorithms within a commercial +Unix operating system. However, this replugging permitted only a single +reader at a time. The following year, this same group of researchers +extended their technique to allow for multiple readers [Cowan96a]. +Their approach requires memory barriers (and thus pipeline stalls), +but reduces memory latency, contention, and locking overheads. + +1995 also saw the first publication of DYNIX/ptx's RCU mechanism +[Slingwine95], which was optimized for modern CPU architectures, +and was successfully applied to a number of situations within the +DYNIX/ptx kernel. The corresponding conference paper appeared in 1998 +[McKenney98]. + +In 1999, the Tornado and K42 groups described their "generations" +mechanism, which quite similar to RCU [Gamsa99]. These operating systems +made pervasive use of RCU in place of "existence locks", which greatly +simplifies locking hierarchies. + +2001 saw the first RCU presentation involving Linux [McKenney01a] +at OLS. The resulting abundance of RCU patches was presented the +following year [McKenney02a], and use of RCU in dcache was first +described that same year [Linder02a]. + +Also in 2002, Michael [Michael02b,Michael02a] presented techniques +that defer the destruction of data structures to simplify non-blocking +synchronization (wait-free synchronization, lock-free synchronization, +and obstruction-free synchronization are all examples of non-blocking +synchronization). In particular, this technique eliminates locking, +reduces contention, reduces memory latency for readers, and parallelizes +pipeline stalls and memory latency for writers. However, these +techniques still impose significant read-side overhead in the form of +memory barriers. Researchers at Sun worked along similar lines in the +same timeframe [HerlihyLM02,HerlihyLMS03]. + +In 2003, the K42 group described how RCU could be used to create +hot-pluggable implementations of operating-system functions. Later that +year saw a paper describing an RCU implementation of System V IPC +[Arcangeli03], and an introduction to RCU in Linux Journal [McKenney03a]. + +2004 has seen a Linux-Journal article on use of RCU in dcache +[McKenney04a], a performance comparison of locking to RCU on several +different CPUs [McKenney04b], a dissertation describing use of RCU in a +number of operating-system kernels [PaulEdwardMcKenneyPhD], and a paper +describing how to make RCU safe for soft-realtime applications [Sarma04c]. + + +Bibtex Entries + +@article{Kung80 +,author="H. T. Kung and Q. Lehman" +,title="Concurrent Maintenance of Binary Search Trees" +,Year="1980" +,Month="September" +,journal="ACM Transactions on Database Systems" +,volume="5" +,number="3" +,pages="354-382" +} + +@techreport{Manber82 +,author="Udi Manber and Richard E. Ladner" +,title="Concurrency Control in a Dynamic Search Structure" +,institution="Department of Computer Science, University of Washington" +,address="Seattle, Washington" +,year="1982" +,number="82-01-01" +,month="January" +,pages="28" +} + +@article{Manber84 +,author="Udi Manber and Richard E. Ladner" +,title="Concurrency Control in a Dynamic Search Structure" +,Year="1984" +,Month="September" +,journal="ACM Transactions on Database Systems" +,volume="9" +,number="3" +,pages="439-455" +} + +@techreport{Hennessy89 +,author="James P. Hennessy and Damian L. Osisek and Joseph W. {Seigh II}" +,title="Passive Serialization in a Multitasking Environment" +,institution="US Patent and Trademark Office" +,address="Washington, DC" +,year="1989" +,number="US Patent 4,809,168 (lapsed)" +,month="February" +,pages="11" +} + +@techreport{Pugh90 +,author="William Pugh" +,title="Concurrent Maintenance of Skip Lists" +,institution="Institute of Advanced Computer Science Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland" +,address="College Park, Maryland" +,year="1990" +,number="CS-TR-2222.1" +,month="June" +} + +@Book{Adams91 +,Author="Gregory R. Adams" +,title="Concurrent Programming, Principles, and Practices" +,Publisher="Benjamin Cummins" +,Year="1991" +} + +@unpublished{Jacobson93 +,author="Van Jacobson" +,title="Avoid Read-Side Locking Via Delayed Free" +,year="1993" +,month="September" +,note="Verbal discussion" +} + +@Conference{AjuJohn95 +,Author="Aju John" +,Title="Dynamic vnodes -- Design and Implementation" +,Booktitle="{USENIX Winter 1995}" +,Publisher="USENIX Association" +,Month="January" +,Year="1995" +,pages="11-23" +,Address="New Orleans, LA" +} + +@techreport{Slingwine95 +,author="John D. Slingwine and Paul E. McKenney" +,title="Apparatus and Method for Achieving Reduced Overhead Mutual +Exclusion and Maintaining Coherency in a Multiprocessor System +Utilizing Execution History and Thread Monitoring" +,institution="US Patent and Trademark Office" +,address="Washington, DC" +,year="1995" +,number="US Patent 5,442,758 (contributed under GPL)" +,month="August" +} + +@techreport{Slingwine97 +,author="John D. Slingwine and Paul E. McKenney" +,title="Method for maintaining data coherency using thread +activity summaries in a multicomputer system" +,institution="US Patent and Trademark Office" +,address="Washington, DC" +,year="1997" +,number="US Patent 5,608,893 (contributed under GPL)" +,month="March" +} + +@techreport{Slingwine98 +,author="John D. Slingwine and Paul E. McKenney" +,title="Apparatus and method for achieving reduced overhead +mutual exclusion and maintaining coherency in a multiprocessor +system utilizing execution history and thread monitoring" +,institution="US Patent and Trademark Office" +,address="Washington, DC" +,year="1998" +,number="US Patent 5,727,209 (contributed under GPL)" +,month="March" +} + +@Conference{McKenney98 +,Author="Paul E. McKenney and John D. Slingwine" +,Title="Read-Copy Update: Using Execution History to Solve Concurrency +Problems" +,Booktitle="{Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems}" +,Month="October" +,Year="1998" +,pages="509-518" +,Address="Las Vegas, NV" +} + +@Conference{Gamsa99 +,Author="Ben Gamsa and Orran Krieger and Jonathan Appavoo and Michael Stumm" +,Title="Tornado: Maximizing Locality and Concurrency in a Shared Memory +Multiprocessor Operating System" +,Booktitle="{Proceedings of the 3\textsuperscript{rd} Symposium on +Operating System Design and Implementation}" +,Month="February" +,Year="1999" +,pages="87-100" +,Address="New Orleans, LA" +} + +@techreport{Slingwine01 +,author="John D. Slingwine and Paul E. McKenney" +,title="Apparatus and method for achieving reduced overhead +mutual exclusion and maintaining coherency in a multiprocessor +system utilizing execution history and thread monitoring" +,institution="US Patent and Trademark Office" +,address="Washington, DC" +,year="2001" +,number="US Patent 5,219,690 (contributed under GPL)" +,month="April" +} + +@Conference{McKenney01a +,Author="Paul E. McKenney and Jonathan Appavoo and Andi Kleen and +Orran Krieger and Rusty Russell and Dipankar Sarma and Maneesh Soni" +,Title="Read-Copy Update" +,Booktitle="{Ottawa Linux Symposium}" +,Month="July" +,Year="2001" +,note="Available: +\url{http://www.linuxsymposium.org/2001/abstracts/readcopy.php} +\url{http://www.rdrop.com/users/paulmck/rclock/rclock_OLS.2001.05.01c.pdf} +[Viewed June 23, 2004]" +annotation=" +Described RCU, and presented some patches implementing and using it in +the Linux kernel. +" +} + +@Conference{Linder02a +,Author="Hanna Linder and Dipankar Sarma and Maneesh Soni" +,Title="Scalability of the Directory Entry Cache" +,Booktitle="{Ottawa Linux Symposium}" +,Month="June" +,Year="2002" +,pages="289-300" +} + +@Conference{McKenney02a +,Author="Paul E. McKenney and Dipankar Sarma and +Andrea Arcangeli and Andi Kleen and Orran Krieger and Rusty Russell" +,Title="Read-Copy Update" +,Booktitle="{Ottawa Linux Symposium}" +,Month="June" +,Year="2002" +,pages="338-367" +,note="Available: +\url{http://www.linux.org.uk/~ajh/ols2002_proceedings.pdf.gz} +[Viewed June 23, 2004]" +} + +@article{Appavoo03a +,author="J. Appavoo and K. Hui and C. A. N. Soules and R. W. Wisniewski and +D. M. {Da Silva} and O. Krieger and M. A. Auslander and D. J. Edelsohn and +B. Gamsa and G. R. Ganger and P. McKenney and M. Ostrowski and +B. Rosenburg and M. Stumm and J. Xenidis" +,title="Enabling Autonomic Behavior in Systems Software With Hot Swapping" +,Year="2003" +,Month="January" +,journal="IBM Systems Journal" +,volume="42" +,number="1" +,pages="60-76" +} + +@Conference{Arcangeli03 +,Author="Andrea Arcangeli and Mingming Cao and Paul E. McKenney and +Dipankar Sarma" +,Title="Using Read-Copy Update Techniques for {System V IPC} in the +{Linux} 2.5 Kernel" +,Booktitle="Proceedings of the 2003 USENIX Annual Technical Conference +(FREENIX Track)" +,Publisher="USENIX Association" +,year="2003" +,month="June" +,pages="297-310" +} + +@article{McKenney03a +,author="Paul E. McKenney" +,title="Using {RCU} in the {Linux} 2.5 Kernel" +,Year="2003" +,Month="October" +,journal="Linux Journal" +,volume="1" +,number="114" +,pages="18-26" +} + +@article{McKenney04a +,author="Paul E. McKenney and Dipankar Sarma and Maneesh Soni" +,title="Scaling dcache with {RCU}" +,Year="2004" +,Month="January" +,journal="Linux Journal" +,volume="1" +,number="118" +,pages="38-46" +} + +@Conference{McKenney04b +,Author="Paul E. McKenney" +,Title="{RCU} vs. Locking Performance on Different {CPUs}" +,Booktitle="{linux.conf.au}" +,Month="January" +,Year="2004" +,Address="Adelaide, Australia" +,note="Available: +\url{http://www.linux.org.au/conf/2004/abstracts.html#90} +\url{http://www.rdrop.com/users/paulmck/rclock/lockperf.2004.01.17a.pdf} +[Viewed June 23, 2004]" +} + +@phdthesis{PaulEdwardMcKenneyPhD +,author="Paul E. McKenney" +,title="Exploiting Deferred Destruction: +An Analysis of Read-Copy-Update Techniques +in Operating System Kernels" +,school="OGI School of Science and Engineering at +Oregon Health and Sciences University" +,year="2004" +} + +@Conference{Sarma04c +,Author="Dipankar Sarma and Paul E. McKenney" +,Title="Making RCU Safe for Deep Sub-Millisecond Response Realtime Applications" +,Booktitle="Proceedings of the 2004 USENIX Annual Technical Conference +(FREENIX Track)" +,Publisher="USENIX Association" +,year="2004" +,month="June" +,pages="182-191" +} |