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[trans-mem] Add gl_wt TM method.

Message ID 1318539750.3265.1683.camel@triegel.csb
State New
Headers show

Commit Message

Torvald Riegel Oct. 13, 2011, 9:02 p.m. UTC 
On Tue, 2011-08-30 at 00:33 +0200, Torvald Riegel wrote:
> The attached patches are several changes required for a new TM method,
> gl_wt (global lock, write-through), which is added by the last patch
> 
> patch1: Add TM-method-specific begin code. All time-based TMs need to
> know at which point in time they start working. Initializing lazily on
> the first txnal load or store would be unnecessary overhead.
> 
> patch2: A small fix for serial mode. This change should have been
> included in the previous renaming of the serial mode dispatchs.
> 
> patch3: We can't free transaction-local memory during nested commits
> unless we also go through the undo and redo logs and remove all
> references to the to-be-freed memory (otherwise, we'll undo/redo to
> privatized memory...). I guess going trough the logs is higher overhead
> than just keeping the allocations around. If we see transactions in
> practice that have large malloc/free cycles embedded in nested txns that
> are not flattened, we can still add special handling for this case.
> 
> patch4: We sometimes need to re-initialize method groups (e.g., to avoid
> overflow of counters etc.). TM methods can request this using a special
> restart reason.
> 
> patch5: The undo log is used for both thread-local and shared data
> (which are separate). Maintaining two undo logs does not provide any
> advantages. However, we have to perform undo actions to shared data
> before dispatch-specific rollback (e.g., where we release locks).
> 
> patch6: Add support for quiescence-based privatization safety (using
> gtm_thread::shared_state as the value of the current (snapshot) time of
> a transaction). Currently, this uses just spinning, but it should
> eventually be changed to block using cond vars / futexes if necessary.
> This requires more thought and tuning however, as it should probably be
> integrated with the serial lock (and it poses similar challenges, such
> as having to minimize the number of wait/wakeup calls, number of cache
> misses, etc.). Therefore, this should be addressed in a future patch.
> 
> patch7: Finally, the new TM method, gl_wt (global lock, write trough).
> This is a simple algorithm that uses a global versioned lock (aka
> ownership record or orec) together with write-through / undolog-style
> txnal writes. This has a lot of similarities to undolog-style TM methods
> that use several locks (e.g., privatization safety has to be ensured),
> but has less overhead. If update txns are frequent, it obviously won't
> scale. With the current code base, gl_wt performs better than
> serialirr_onwrite but probably mostly due spinning and restarts when the
> global lock is acquired instead of falling back to heavyweight waiting
> via futex wait/wakeup calls.
> gl_wt is in the globallock method group, to which at least another
> write-back, value-based-validation TM method will be added.

The attached two patches fix one bug in gl_wt (patch8) and one unrelated
bug that affected gl_wt (patch9).

patch8: The previous code did not handle transitions to serial mode
properly. On such a transition, a method's trycommit() and/or rollback()
functions are called when the serial lock is already acquired. This
acquisition is handled through (and stored in) gtm_thread::shared_state,
which the gl_wt method uses too. Thus, blindly overwriting shared_state
in commit/rollback doesn't work. The fix handles now detects this case
and makes gl_wt not interfere with serial mode anymore.

patch9: The previous custom TLS slot read accesses were reordered by the
compiler across non-inlined function calls. For gl_wt, this caused
restarts to operate on a stale value for abi_disp() (because this call
was moved to before the decide_retry_strategy() call, which would call
set_abi_disp). In turn, this broke gl_wt because it was being used
together with serial mode, which does not work because it tries to use
shared_state too.

Ok for branch (patches 1-9)?
commit 08d3f16c5fffa2bd3acb0c27af4010c72c75b23d
Author: Torvald Riegel <triegel@redhat.com>
Date:   Thu Oct 13 18:16:39 2011 +0200

    Fix gl_wt commit/rollback when serial lock has been acquired.
    
    	* method-gl.cc (gl_wt_dispatch::trycommit): Fix interaction with
    	gtm_thread::shared_state when the serial lock is acquired.
    	(gl_wt_dispatch::rollback): Same.
commit c6eda0b9b471abf853af85c08eca3f4023f60bc7
Author: Torvald Riegel <triegel@redhat.com>
Date:   Thu Oct 13 22:51:46 2011 +0200

    Fix TLS read accesses on Linux/x86.
    
    	* config/linux/x86/tls.h (abi_disp): Make TLS slot read volatile.
    	(gtm_thr): Same.

diff --git a/libitm/config/linux/x86/tls.h b/libitm/config/linux/x86/tls.h
index 3d247e3..2525f36 100644
--- a/libitm/config/linux/x86/tls.h
+++ b/libitm/config/linux/x86/tls.h
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ namespace GTM HIDDEN {
 static inline struct gtm_thread *gtm_thr(void)
 {
   struct gtm_thread *r;
-  asm (SEG_READ(10) : "=r"(r));
+  asm volatile (SEG_READ(10) : "=r"(r));
   return r;
 }
 
@@ -84,7 +84,7 @@ static inline void set_gtm_thr(struct gtm_thread *x)
 static inline struct abi_dispatch *abi_disp(void)
 {
   struct abi_dispatch *r;
-  asm (SEG_DECODE_READ(11) : "=r"(r));
+  asm volatile (SEG_DECODE_READ(11) : "=r"(r));
   return r;
 }
diff mbox

Patch

diff --git a/libitm/method-gl.cc b/libitm/method-gl.cc
index 17a2b9f..1dc700a 100644
--- a/libitm/method-gl.cc
+++ b/libitm/method-gl.cc
@@ -72,6 +72,12 @@  static gl_mg o_gl_mg;
 // validate that no other update transaction comitted before we acquired the
 // orec, so we have the most recent timestamp and no other transaction can
 // commit until we have committed).
+// However, we therefore cannot use this method for a serial transaction
+// (because shared_state needs to remain at ~0) and we have to be careful
+// when switching to serial mode (see the special handling in trycommit() and
+// rollback()).
+// ??? This sharing adds some complexity wrt. serial mode. Just use a separate
+// state variable?
 class gl_wt_dispatch : public abi_dispatch
 {
 protected:
@@ -202,10 +208,22 @@  public:
 
   virtual bool trycommit(gtm_word& priv_time)
   {
-    // Release the orec but do not reset shared_state, which will be modified
-    // by the serial lock right after our commit anyway.
     gtm_thread* tx = gtm_thr();
     gtm_word v = tx->shared_state;
+
+    // Special case: If shared_state is ~0, then we have acquired the
+    // serial lock (tx->state is not updated yet). In this case, the previous
+    // value isn't available anymore, so grab it from the global lock, which
+    // must have a meaningful value because no other transactions are active
+    // anymore. In particular, if it is locked, then we are an update
+    // transaction, which is all we care about for commit.
+    if (v == ~(typeof v)0)
+      v = o_gl_mg.orec;
+
+    // Release the orec but do not reset shared_state, which will be modified
+    // by the serial lock right after our commit anyway. Also, resetting
+    // shared state here would interfere with the serial lock's use of this
+    // location.
     if (gl_mg::is_locked(v))
       {
         // Release the global orec, increasing its version number / timestamp.
@@ -228,11 +246,20 @@  public:
     if (cp != 0)
       return;
 
+    gtm_thread *tx = gtm_thr();
+    gtm_word v = tx->shared_state;
+    // Special case: If shared_state is ~0, then we have acquired the
+    // serial lock (tx->state is not updated yet). In this case, the previous
+    // value isn't available anymore, so grab it from the global lock, which
+    // must have a meaningful value because no other transactions are active
+    // anymore. In particular, if it is locked, then we are an update
+    // transaction, which is all we care about for rollback.
+    if (v == ~(typeof v)0)
+      v = o_gl_mg.orec;
+
     // Release lock and increment version number to prevent dirty reads.
     // Also reset shared state here, so that begin_or_restart() can expect a
     // value that is correct wrt. privatization safety.
-    gtm_thread *tx = gtm_thr();
-    gtm_word v = tx->shared_state;
     if (gl_mg::is_locked(v))
       {
         // Release the global orec, increasing its version number / timestamp.
@@ -242,7 +269,11 @@  public:
         o_gl_mg.orec = v;
 
         // Also reset the timestamp published via shared_state.
-        tx->shared_state = v;
+        // Special case: Only do this if we are not a serial transaction
+        // because otherwise, we would interfere with the serial lock.
+        if (tx->shared_state != ~(typeof tx->shared_state)0)
+          tx->shared_state = v;
+
         // We need a store-load barrier after this store to prevent it
         // from becoming visible after later data loads because the
         // previous value of shared_state has been higher than the actual