about summary refs log tree commit diff
path: root/NEWS
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorAdhemerval Zanella <adhemerval.zanella@linaro.org>2018-08-27 09:42:50 -0300
committerAdhemerval Zanella <adhemerval.zanella@linaro.org>2018-09-21 10:18:03 -0700
commitf0458cf4f9ff3d870c43b624e6dccaaf657d5e83 (patch)
tree92e48875fbeb81db1890ea1b8f75b5c7ec900ae1 /NEWS
parent434d45fd70ac1a137d01b715ea99c03ce3c21b14 (diff)
downloadglibc-f0458cf4f9ff3d870c43b624e6dccaaf657d5e83.tar.gz
glibc-f0458cf4f9ff3d870c43b624e6dccaaf657d5e83.tar.xz
glibc-f0458cf4f9ff3d870c43b624e6dccaaf657d5e83.zip
powerpc: Only enable TLE with PPC_FEATURE2_HTM_NOSC
Linux from 3.9 through 4.2 does not abort HTM transaction on syscalls,
instead it suspend and resume it when leaving the kernel.  The
side-effects of the syscall will always remain visible, even if the
transaction is aborted.  This is an issue when transaction is used along
with futex syscall, on pthread_cond_wait for instance, where the futex
call might succeed but the transaction is rolled back leading the
pthread_cond object in an inconsistent state.

Glibc used to prevent it by always aborting a transaction before issuing
a syscall.  Linux 4.2 also decided to abort active transaction in
syscalls which makes the glibc workaround superfluous.  Worse, glibc
transaction abortion leads to a performance issue on recent kernels
where the HTM state is saved/restore lazily (v4.9).  By aborting a
transaction on every syscalls, regardless whether a transaction has being
initiated before, GLIBS makes the kernel always save/restore HTM state
(it can not even lazily disable it after a certain number of syscall
iterations).

Because of this shortcoming, Transactional Lock Elision is just enabled
when it has been explicitly set (either by tunables of by a configure
switch) and if kernel aborts HTM transactions on syscalls
(PPC_FEATURE2_HTM_NOSC).  It is reported that using simple benchmark [1],
the context-switch is about 5% faster by not issuing a tabort in every
syscall in newer kernels.

Checked on powerpc64le-linux-gnu with 4.4.0 kernel (Ubuntu 16.04).

	* NEWS: Add note about new TLE support on powerpc64le.
	* sysdeps/powerpc/nptl/tcb-offsets.sym (TM_CAPABLE): Remove.
	* sysdeps/powerpc/nptl/tls.h (tcbhead_t): Rename tm_capable to
	__ununsed1.
	(TLS_INIT_TP, TLS_DEFINE_INIT_TP): Remove tm_capable setup.
	(THREAD_GET_TM_CAPABLE, THREAD_SET_TM_CAPABLE): Remove macros.
	* sysdeps/powerpc/powerpc32/sysdep.h,
	sysdeps/powerpc/powerpc64/sysdep.h (ABORT_TRANSACTION_IMPL,
	ABORT_TRANSACTION): Remove macros.
	* sysdeps/powerpc/sysdep.h (ABORT_TRANSACTION): Likewise.
	* sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/powerpc/elision-conf.c (elision_init): Set
	__pthread_force_elision iff PPC_FEATURE2_HTM_NOSC is set.
	* sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/powerpc/powerpc32/sysdep.h,
	sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/powerpc/powerpc64/sysdep.h
	sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/powerpc/syscall.S (ABORT_TRANSACTION): Remove
	usage.
	* sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/powerpc/not-errno.h: Remove file.

Reported-by: Breno Leitão <leitao@debian.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'NEWS')
-rw-r--r--NEWS9
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 53d7bd09b3..f054dc0433 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -21,6 +21,15 @@ Major new features:
 * The reallocarray function is now declared under _DEFAULT_SOURCE, not just
   for _GNU_SOURCE, to match BSD environments.
 
+* For powercp64le ABI, Transactional Lock Elision is now enabled iff kernel
+  indicates that it will abort the transaction prior to entering the kernel
+  (PPC_FEATURE2_HTM_NOSC on hwcap2).  On older kernels the transaction is
+  suspended, and this caused some undefined side-effects issues by aborting
+  transactions manually.  Glibc avoided it by abort transactions manually on
+  each syscall, but it lead to performance issues on newer kernels where the
+  HTM state is saved and restore lazily (the state being saved even when the
+  process actually does not use HTM).
+
 Deprecated and removed features, and other changes affecting compatibility:
 
 * The glibc.tune tunable namespace has been renamed to glibc.cpu and the