now type sema_t is a structure which can be put in a shared memory area,
and multiple processes can operate it concurrently.
User can either use mmap(MAP_SHARED) + sem_init(pshared=1) or use sem_open()
to initialize a shared semaphore.
Named semaphore uses file system and is located in /tmp directory, and its
file name is prefixed with 'SEMD', so now it is chroot or jail friendly.
In simplist cases, both for named and un-named semaphore, userland code
does not have to enter kernel to reduce/increase semaphore's count.
The semaphore is designed to be crash-safe, it means even if an application
is crashed in the middle of operating semaphore, the semaphore state is
still safely recovered by later use, there is no waiter counter maintained
by userland code.
The main semaphore code is in libc and libthr only has some necessary stubs,
this makes it possible that a non-threaded application can use semaphore
without linking to thread library.
Old semaphore implementation is kept libc to maintain binary compatibility.
The kernel ksem API is no longer used in the new implemenation.
Discussed on: threads@
we set scheduling parameters and cpu binding fully in userland, and
because default scheduling policy is SCHED_RR (time-sharing), we set
default sched_inherit to PTHREAD_SCHED_INHERIT, this saves a system
call.
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.
wait(), waitpid() and usleep(), they are internal versions and
should not be cancellation points.
2. Make wait3() as a cancellation point.
3. Move raise() and pause() into file thr_sig.c.
4. Add functions _sigsuspend, _sigwait, _sigtimedwait and _sigwaitinfo,
remove SIGCANCEL bit in wait-set for those functions, the signal is
used internally to implement thread cancellation.
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
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
a fork, make sure that the current thread isn't detached and freed. As
a consequence the thread should be inserted into the head of the
active list only once (in the beginning).
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 Remove some code duplication between _thread_init(), which is run once
to initialize libthr and the intitial thread, and pthread_create(), which
initializes newly created threads, into a new function called from both
places: init_td_common()
o Move initialization of certain parts of libthr into a separate
function. These include:
- Active threads list and it's lock
- Dead threads list and it's lock & condition variable
- Naming and insertion of the initial thread into the
active threads list.
implementation and the new improved one. We now precompute the
signal set passed to sigtimedwait, using an inverted set when
necessary for compatibility with older kernels.
an application compiled -static with libthr would dump core in
malloc(3) because the stub thread initialization routine in libc would
be used instead of the libthr supplied one.
list is protected by a spinlock_t, but the dead list uses a pthread_mutex
because it is necessary to synchronize other threads with the garbage
collector thread. Lock/Unlock macros are used so it's easier to make
changes to the locks in the future.
The 'dead thread list' lock is intended to replace the gc mutex.
This doesn't have any practical ramifications. It simply makes it
clearer what the purpose of the lock is. The gc will use this lock,
instead of the gc mutex, to synchronize access to the dead list with
other threads.
Modify _pthread_exit() to use these two new locks instead of GIANT_LOCK,
and also to properly lock and protect thread state changes,
especially with respect to a joining thread.
The gc thread was also re-arranged to be more organized and less nested.
_pthread_join() was also modified to use the thread list locks. However,
locking and unlocking here needs special care because a thread could find
itself in a position where it's joining an exiting thread that is
waiting on the dead list lock, which this thread (joiner) holds. If the
joiner doesn't take care to lock *and* unlock in the same order they
(the joiner and the joinee) could deadlock against each other.
Approved by: re/blanket libthr
as curthread in the new context, so that it will be set automatically when
the thread is switched to. This fixes a race where we'd run for a little
while with curthread unset in _thread_start.
Reviewed by: jeff
