[PATCH v6 3/5] lazy tlb: shoot lazies, non-refcounting lazy tlb mm reference handling scheme

[Nicholas Piggin]

On Thu Jan 19, 2023 at 8:22 AM AEST, Nadav Amit wrote:
>
>
> > On Jan 18, 2023, at 12:00 AM, Nicholas Piggin <npiggin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > +static void do_shoot_lazy_tlb(void *arg)
> > +{
> > +	struct mm_struct *mm = arg;
> > +
> > + 	if (current->active_mm == mm) {
> > + 		WARN_ON_ONCE(current->mm);
> > + 		current->active_mm = &init_mm;
> > + 		switch_mm(mm, &init_mm, current);
> > + 	}
> > +}
>
> I might be out of touch - doesn’t a flush already take place when we free
> the page-tables, at least on common cases on x86?
>
> IIUC exit_mmap() would free page-tables, and whenever page-tables are
> freed, on x86, we do shootdown regardless to whether the target CPU TLB state
> marks is_lazy. Then, flush_tlb_func() should call switch_mm_irqs_off() and
> everything should be fine, no?
>
> [ I understand you care about powerpc, just wondering on the effect on x86 ]

Now I come to think of it, Rik had done this for x86 a while back.

https://lore.kernel.org/all/20180728215357.3249-10-riel@surriel.com/

I didn't know about it when I wrote this, so I never dug into why it
didn't get merged. It might have missed the final __mmdrop races but
I'm not not sure, x86 lazy tlb mode is too complicated to know at a
glance. I would check with him though.

Thanks,
Nick