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

[Nadav Amit]

On 1/19/23 6:22 AM, Nicholas Piggin wrote:
> 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.

My point was that naturally (i.e., as done today), when exit_mmap() is 
done, you release the page tables (not just the pages). On x86 it means 
that you also send shootdown IPI to all the *lazy* CPUs to perform a 
flush, so they would exit the lazy mode.

[ this should be true for 99% of the cases, excluding cases where there
   were not page-tables, for instance ]

So the patch of Rik, I think, does not help in the common cases, 
although it may perhaps make implicit actions more explicit in the code.