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@@ -13,18 +13,8 @@ static DEFINE_SPINLOCK(xxx_lock);
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The above is always safe. It will disable interrupts _locally_, but the
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spinlock itself will guarantee the global lock, so it will guarantee that
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there is only one thread-of-control within the region(s) protected by that
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-lock. This works well even under UP. The above sequence under UP
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-essentially is just the same as doing
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-
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- unsigned long flags;
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-
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- save_flags(flags); cli();
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- ... critical section ...
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- restore_flags(flags);
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-
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-so the code does _not_ need to worry about UP vs SMP issues: the spinlocks
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-work correctly under both (and spinlocks are actually more efficient on
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-architectures that allow doing the "save_flags + cli" in one operation).
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+lock. This works well even under UP also, so the code does _not_ need to
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+worry about UP vs SMP issues: the spinlocks work correctly under both.
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NOTE! Implications of spin_locks for memory are further described in:
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@@ -36,27 +26,7 @@ The above is usually pretty simple (you usually need and want only one
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spinlock for most things - using more than one spinlock can make things a
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lot more complex and even slower and is usually worth it only for
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sequences that you _know_ need to be split up: avoid it at all cost if you
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-aren't sure). HOWEVER, it _does_ mean that if you have some code that does
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-
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- cli();
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- .. critical section ..
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- sti();
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-
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-and another sequence that does
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-
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- spin_lock_irqsave(flags);
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- .. critical section ..
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- spin_unlock_irqrestore(flags);
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-
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-then they are NOT mutually exclusive, and the critical regions can happen
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-at the same time on two different CPU's. That's fine per se, but the
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-critical regions had better be critical for different things (ie they
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-can't stomp on each other).
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-
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-The above is a problem mainly if you end up mixing code - for example the
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-routines in ll_rw_block() tend to use cli/sti to protect the atomicity of
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-their actions, and if a driver uses spinlocks instead then you should
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-think about issues like the above.
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+aren't sure).
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This is really the only really hard part about spinlocks: once you start
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using spinlocks they tend to expand to areas you might not have noticed
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@@ -120,11 +90,10 @@ Lesson 3: spinlocks revisited.
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The single spin-lock primitives above are by no means the only ones. They
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are the most safe ones, and the ones that work under all circumstances,
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-but partly _because_ they are safe they are also fairly slow. They are
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-much faster than a generic global cli/sti pair, but slower than they'd
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-need to be, because they do have to disable interrupts (which is just a
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-single instruction on a x86, but it's an expensive one - and on other
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-architectures it can be worse).
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+but partly _because_ they are safe they are also fairly slow. They are slower
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+than they'd need to be, because they do have to disable interrupts
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+(which is just a single instruction on a x86, but it's an expensive one -
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+and on other architectures it can be worse).
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If you have a case where you have to protect a data structure across
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several CPU's and you want to use spinlocks you can potentially use
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