Updated patch adding a variant of RCU that permits sleeping in read-side
critical sections. SRCU is as follows:
o Each use of SRCU creates its own srcu_struct, and each
srcu_struct has its own set of grace periods. This is
critical, as it prevents one subsystem with a blocking
reader from holding up SRCU grace periods for other
subsystems.
o The SRCU primitives (srcu_read_lock(), srcu_read_unlock(),
and synchronize_srcu()) all take a pointer to a srcu_struct.
o The SRCU primitives must be called from process context.
o srcu_read_lock() returns an int that must be passed to
the matching srcu_read_unlock(). Realtime RCU avoids the
need for this by storing the state in the task struct,
but SRCU needs to allow a given code path to pass through
multiple SRCU domains -- storing state in the task struct
would therefore require either arbitrary space in the
task struct or arbitrary limits on SRCU nesting. So I
kicked the state-storage problem up to the caller.
Of course, it is not permitted to call synchronize_srcu()
while in an SRCU read-side critical section.
o There is no call_srcu(). It would not be hard to implement
one, but it seems like too easy a way to OOM the system.
(Hey, we have enough trouble with call_rcu(), which does
-not- permit readers to sleep!!!) So, if you want it,
please tell me why...
[josht@us.ibm.com: sparse notation]
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Triplett <josh@freedesktop.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Paul E. McKenney