The ACPI OS layer in Linux uses RCU to protect the walkers of the
list of ACPI memory mappings from seeing an inconsistent state
while it is being updated. Among other situations, that list can
be walked in (NMI and non-NMI) interrupt context, so using a
sleeping lock to protect it is not an option.
However, performance issues related to the RCU usage in there
appear, as described by Dan Williams:
"Recently a performance problem was reported for a process invoking
a non-trival ASL program. The method call in this case ends up
repetitively triggering a call path like:
acpi_ex_store
acpi_ex_store_object_to_node
acpi_ex_write_data_to_field
acpi_ex_insert_into_field
acpi_ex_write_with_update_rule
acpi_ex_field_datum_io
acpi_ex_access_region
acpi_ev_address_space_dispatch
acpi_ex_system_memory_space_handler
acpi_os_map_cleanup.part.14
_synchronize_rcu_expedited.constprop.89
schedule
The end result of frequent synchronize_rcu_expedited() invocation is
tiny sub-millisecond spurts of execution where the scheduler freely
migrates this apparently sleepy task. The overhead of frequent
scheduler invocation multiplies the execution time by a factor
of 2-3X."
The source of this is that acpi_ex_system_memory_space_handler()
unmaps the memory mapping currently cached by it at the access time
if that mapping doesn't cover the memory area being accessed.
Consequently, if there is a memory opregion with two fields
separated from each other by an unused chunk of address space that
is large enough for not being covered by a single mapping, and they
happen to be used in an alternating pattern, the unmapping will
occur on every acpi_ex_system_memory_space_handler() invocation for
that memory opregion and that will lead to significant overhead.
Moreover, acpi_ex_system_memory_space_handler() carries out the
memory unmapping with the namespace and interpreter mutexes held
which may lead to additional latency, because all of the tasks
wanting to acquire on of these mutexes need to wait for the
memory unmapping operation to complete.
To address that, rework acpi_os_unmap_memory() so that it does not
release the memory mapping covering the given address range right
away and instead make it queue up the mapping at hand for removal
via queue_rcu_work().
Reported-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Tested-by: Xiang Li <xiang.z.li@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
1757659d02