to tune pthread mutex performance:
1. LIBPTHREAD_SPINLOOPS
If a pthread mutex is being locked by another thread, this environment
variable sets total number of spin loops before the current thread
sleeps in kernel, this saves a syscall overhead if the mutex will be
unlocked very soon (well written application code).
2. LIBPTHREAD_YIELDLOOPS
If a pthread mutex is being locked by other threads, this environment
variable sets total number of sched_yield() loops before the currrent
thread sleeps in kernel. if a pthread mutex is locked, the current thread
gives up cpu, but will not sleep in kernel, this means, current thread
does not set contention bit in mutex, but let lock owner to run again
if the owner is on kernel's run queue, and when lock owner unlocks the
mutex, it does not need to enter kernel and do lots of work to resume
mutex waiters, in some cases, this saves lots of syscall overheads for
mutex owner.
In my practice, sometimes LIBPTHREAD_YIELDLOOPS can massively improve performance
than LIBPTHREAD_SPINLOOPS, this depends on application. These two environments
are global to all pthread mutex, there is no interface to set them for each
pthread mutex, the default values are zero, this means spinning is turned off
by default.
into pthread structure to keep track of locked PTHREAD_PRIO_PROTECT mutex,
no real mutex code is changed, the mutex locking and unlocking code should
has same performance as before.
to make it work, turnstile like mechanism to support priority
propagating and other realtime scheduling options in kernel
should be available to userland mutex, for the moment, I just
want to make libthr be simple and efficient thread library.
Discussed with: deischen, julian
operation, the caller is blocked util target threads are really
suspended, also avoid suspending a thread when it is holding a
critical lock.
Fix a bug in _thr_ref_delete which tests a never set flag.
rewritten, now timers created with same sigev_notify_attributes will
run in same thread, this allows user to organize which timers can
run in same thread to save some thread resource.
1. fast simple type mutex.
2. __thread tls works.
3. asynchronous cancellation works ( using signal ).
4. thread synchronization is fully based on umtx, mainly, condition
variable and other synchronization objects were rewritten by using
umtx directly. those objects can be shared between processes via
shared memory, it has to change ABI which does not happen yet.
5. default stack size is increased to 1M on 32 bits platform, 2M for
64 bits platform.
As the result, some mysql super-smack benchmarks show performance is
improved massivly.
Okayed by: jeff, mtm, rwatson, scottl
pointer to the corresponding struct thread to the thread ID (lwpid_t)
assigned to that thread. The primary reason for this change is that
libthr now internally uses the same ID as the debugger and the kernel
when referencing to a kernel thread. This allows us to implement the
support for debugging without additional translations and/or mappings.
To preserve the ABI, the 1:1 threading syscalls, including the umtx
locking API have not been changed to work on a lwpid_t. Instead the
1:1 threading syscalls operate on long and the umtx locking API has
not been changed except for the contested bit. Previously this was
the least significant bit. Now it's the most significant bit. Since
the contested bit should not be tested by userland, this change is
not expected to be visible. Just to be sure, UMTX_CONTESTED has been
removed from <sys/umtx.h>.
Reviewed by: mtm@
ABI preservation tested on: i386, ia64
followed are: Only 3 functions (pthread_cancel, pthread_setcancelstate,
pthread_setcanceltype) are required to be async-signal-safe by POSIX. None of
the rest of the pthread api is required to be async-signal-safe. This means
that only the three mentioned functions are safe to use from inside
signal handlers.
However, there are certain system/libc calls that are
cancellation points that a caller may call from within a signal handler,
and since they are cancellation points calls have to be made into libthr
to test for cancellation and exit the thread if necessary. So, the
cancellation test and thread exit code paths must be async-signal-safe
as well. A summary of the changes follows:
o Almost all of the code paths that masked signals, as well as locking the
pthread structure now lock only the pthread structure.
o Signals are masked (and left that way) as soon as a thread enters
pthread_exit().
o The active and dead threads locks now explicitly require that signals
are masked.
o Access to the isdead field of the pthread structure is protected by both
the active and dead list locks for writing. Either one is sufficient for
reading.
o The thread state and type fields have been combined into one three-state
switch to make it easier to read without requiring a lock. It doesn't need
a lock for writing (and therefore for reading either) because only the
current thread can write to it and it is an integer value.
o The thread state field of the pthread structure has been eliminated. It
was an unnecessary field that mostly duplicated the flags field, but
required additional locking that would make a lot more code paths require
signal masking. Any truly unique values (such as PS_DEAD) have been
reborn as separate members of the pthread structure.
o Since the mutex and condvar pthread functions are not async-signal-safe
there is no need to muck about with the wait queues when handling
a signal ...
o ... which also removes the need for wrapping signal handlers and sigaction(2).
o The condvar and mutex async-cancellation code had to be revised as a result
of some of these changes, which resulted in semi-unrelated changes which
would have been difficult to work on as a separate commit, so they are
included as well.
The only part of the changes I am worried about is related to locking for
the pthread joining fields. But, I will take a closer look at them once this
mega-patch is committed.
o Fix mutex priority protocols. Keep separate counts of priority
inheritance and protection mutexes to make things easier.
This will not have much affect since this is only the
userland side, and the rest involves kernel scheduling.
