linux/drivers/staging/pohmelfs
Nick Piggin fa0d7e3de6 fs: icache RCU free inodes
RCU free the struct inode. This will allow:

- Subsequent store-free path walking patch. The inode must be consulted for
  permissions when walking, so an RCU inode reference is a must.
- sb_inode_list_lock to be moved inside i_lock because sb list walkers who want
  to take i_lock no longer need to take sb_inode_list_lock to walk the list in
  the first place. This will simplify and optimize locking.
- Could remove some nested trylock loops in dcache code
- Could potentially simplify things a bit in VM land. Do not need to take the
  page lock to follow page->mapping.

The downsides of this is the performance cost of using RCU. In a simple
creat/unlink microbenchmark, performance drops by about 10% due to inability to
reuse cache-hot slab objects. As iterations increase and RCU freeing starts
kicking over, this increases to about 20%.

In cases where inode lifetimes are longer (ie. many inodes may be allocated
during the average life span of a single inode), a lot of this cache reuse is
not applicable, so the regression caused by this patch is smaller.

The cache-hot regression could largely be avoided by using SLAB_DESTROY_BY_RCU,
however this adds some complexity to list walking and store-free path walking,
so I prefer to implement this at a later date, if it is shown to be a win in
real situations. I haven't found a regression in any non-micro benchmark so I
doubt it will be a problem.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@kernel.dk>
2011-01-07 17:50:26 +11:00
..
Kconfig Staging: pohmelfs: fix kconfig dependencies 2009-04-03 14:53:36 -07:00
Makefile Staging: pohmelfs: kconfig/makefile and vfs changes. 2009-04-03 14:53:36 -07:00
config.c staging: Drop unnecessary null test 2010-08-31 11:13:15 -07:00
crypto.c Staging: pohmelfs: fix spaces and TAB coding style issue in crypto.c 2010-05-11 11:35:41 -07:00
dir.c Staging: pohmelfs: fix spaces and TAB coding style issue in dir.c 2010-05-11 11:35:41 -07:00
inode.c fs: icache RCU free inodes 2011-01-07 17:50:26 +11:00
lock.c include cleanup: Update gfp.h and slab.h includes to prepare for breaking implicit slab.h inclusion from percpu.h 2010-03-30 22:02:32 +09:00
mcache.c Staging: pohmelfs: distributed locking and cache coherency protocol. 2009-04-03 14:53:34 -07:00
net.c Staging: pohmelfs: fix spaces and TAB coding style issue in net.c 2010-05-11 11:35:41 -07:00
netfs.h Staging: pohmelfs: fix spaces and TAB coding style issue in netfs.h 2010-05-11 11:35:41 -07:00
path_entry.c fs: dcache remove dcache_lock 2011-01-07 17:50:23 +11:00
trans.c Staging: pohmelfs: sync with the development tree 2009-09-15 12:02:30 -07:00