• Tejun Heo's avatar
    workqueue: Implement BH workqueues to eventually replace tasklets · 4cb1ef64
    Tejun Heo authored
    The only generic interface to execute asynchronously in the BH context is
    tasklet; however, it's marked deprecated and has some design flaws such as
    the execution code accessing the tasklet item after the execution is
    complete which can lead to subtle use-after-free in certain usage scenarios
    and less-developed flush and cancel mechanisms.
    
    This patch implements BH workqueues which share the same semantics and
    features of regular workqueues but execute their work items in the softirq
    context. As there is always only one BH execution context per CPU, none of
    the concurrency management mechanisms applies and a BH workqueue can be
    thought of as a convenience wrapper around softirq.
    
    Except for the inability to sleep while executing and lack of max_active
    adjustments, BH workqueues and work items should behave the same as regular
    workqueues and work items.
    
    Currently, the execution is hooked to tasklet[_hi]. However, the goal is to
    convert all tasklet users over to BH workqueues. Once the conversion is
    complete, tasklet can be removed and BH workqueues can directly take over
    the tasklet softirqs.
    
    system_bh[_highpri]_wq are added. As queue-wide flushing doesn't exist in
    tasklet, all existing tasklet users should be able to use the system BH
    workqueues without creating their own workqueues.
    
    v3: - Add missing interrupt.h include.
    
    v2: - Instead of using tasklets, hook directly into its softirq action
          functions - tasklet[_hi]_action(). This is slightly cheaper and closer
          to the eventual code structure we want to arrive at. Suggested by Lai.
    
        - Lai also pointed out several places which need NULL worker->task
          handling or can use clarification. Updated.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarTejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
    Suggested-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
    Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/CAHk-=wjDW53w4-YcSmgKC5RruiRLHmJ1sXeYdp_ZgVoBw=5byA@mail.gmail.comTested-by: default avatarAllen Pais <allen.lkml@gmail.com>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarLai Jiangshan <jiangshanlai@gmail.com>
    4cb1ef64
workqueue.rst 29.3 KB