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author | Paul Irofti <pirofti@cvs.openbsd.org> | 2018-06-08 13:53:02 +0000 |
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committer | Paul Irofti <pirofti@cvs.openbsd.org> | 2018-06-08 13:53:02 +0000 |
commit | 4a152d480f9947fdd104aee21e4842cdc30d0cb3 (patch) | |
tree | 0039f306a822416c7951036416eb5581120d923b /gnu/share | |
parent | 522d400896b03589ce78f8cd82d94a9942d2e197 (diff) |
New semaphore implementation making sem_post async-safe.
POSIX dictates that sem_post() needs to be async-safe here[0] and is
thus included in the list of safe functions to call from within a signal
handler here[1].
The old semaphore implementation is using spinlocks and __thrsleep to
synchronize between threads.
Let's say there are two threads: T0 and T1 and the semaphore has V=0.
T1 calls sem_wait() and it will now sleep (spinlock) until someone else
sem_post()'s. Let's say T0 sends a signal to T1 and exits.
The signal handler calls sem_post() which is meant to unblock T1 by
incrementing V. With the old semaphore implementation we we are now in a
deadlock as sem_post spinlocks on the same lock.
The new implementation does not suffer from this defect as it
uses futexes to resolve locking and thus sem_post does not need to spin.
Besides fixing this defect and making us POSIX compliant, this should
also improve performance as there should be less context switching and
thus less time spent in the kernel.
For architectures that do not provied futexes and atomic operations,
the old implementation will be used and it is now being renamed to
rthread_sem_compat as discussed with mpi@.
[0] -- http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/sem_post.html
[1] -- http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/V2_chap02.html
OK visa@, mpi@, guenther@
Diffstat (limited to 'gnu/share')
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