[Kung80] recommended use of a garbage collector to defer destruction
of nodes in a parallel binary search tree in order to simplify its
implementation. This works well in environments that have garbage
-collectors, but current production garbage collectors incur significant
-read-side overhead.
+collectors, but most production garbage collectors incur significant
+overhead.
In 1982, Manber and Ladner [Manber82,Manber84] recommended deferring
destruction until all threads running at that time have terminated, again
structured data, such as the matrices used in scientific programs, and
is thus inapplicable to most data structures in operating-system kernels.
+In 1992, Henry (now Alexia) Massalin completed a dissertation advising
+parallel programmers to defer processing when feasible to simplify
+synchronization. RCU makes extremely heavy use of this advice.
+
In 1993, Jacobson [Jacobson93] verbally described what is perhaps the
simplest deferred-free technique: simply waiting a fixed amount of time
before freeing blocks awaiting deferred free. Jacobson did not describe
following year [McKenney02a], and use of RCU in dcache was first
described that same year [Linder02a].
-Also in 2002, Michael [Michael02b,Michael02a] presented techniques
-that defer the destruction of data structures to simplify non-blocking
-synchronization (wait-free synchronization, lock-free synchronization,
-and obstruction-free synchronization are all examples of non-blocking
-synchronization). In particular, this technique eliminates locking,
-reduces contention, reduces memory latency for readers, and parallelizes
-pipeline stalls and memory latency for writers. However, these
-techniques still impose significant read-side overhead in the form of
-memory barriers. Researchers at Sun worked along similar lines in the
-same timeframe [HerlihyLM02,HerlihyLMS03].
+Also in 2002, Michael [Michael02b,Michael02a] presented "hazard-pointer"
+techniques that defer the destruction of data structures to simplify
+non-blocking synchronization (wait-free synchronization, lock-free
+synchronization, and obstruction-free synchronization are all examples of
+non-blocking synchronization). In particular, this technique eliminates
+locking, reduces contention, reduces memory latency for readers, and
+parallelizes pipeline stalls and memory latency for writers. However,
+these techniques still impose significant read-side overhead in the
+form of memory barriers. Researchers at Sun worked along similar lines
+in the same timeframe [HerlihyLM02]. These techniques can be thought
+of as inside-out reference counts, where the count is represented by the
+number of hazard pointers referencing a given data structure (rather than
+the more conventional counter field within the data structure itself).
+
+By the same token, RCU can be thought of as a "bulk reference count",
+where some form of reference counter covers all reference by a given CPU
+or thread during a set timeframe. This timeframe is related to, but
+not necessarily exactly the same as, an RCU grace period. In classic
+RCU, the reference counter is the per-CPU bit in the "bitmask" field,
+and each such bit covers all references that might have been made by
+the corresponding CPU during the prior grace period. Of course, RCU
+can be thought of in other terms as well.
In 2003, the K42 group described how RCU could be used to create
-hot-pluggable implementations of operating-system functions. Later that
-year saw a paper describing an RCU implementation of System V IPC
-[Arcangeli03], and an introduction to RCU in Linux Journal [McKenney03a].
+hot-pluggable implementations of operating-system functions [Appavoo03a].
+Later that year saw a paper describing an RCU implementation of System
+V IPC [Arcangeli03], and an introduction to RCU in Linux Journal
+[McKenney03a].
2004 has seen a Linux-Journal article on use of RCU in dcache
[McKenney04a], a performance comparison of locking to RCU on several
describing how to make RCU safe for soft-realtime applications [Sarma04c],
and a paper describing SELinux performance with RCU [JamesMorris04b].
-
-2005 has seen further adaptation of RCU to realtime use, permitting
+2005 brought further adaptation of RCU to realtime use, permitting
preemption of RCU realtime critical sections [PaulMcKenney05a,
PaulMcKenney05b].
+2006 saw the first best-paper award for an RCU paper [ThomasEHart2006a],
+as well as further work on efficient implementations of preemptible
+RCU [PaulEMcKenney2006b], but priority-boosting of RCU read-side critical
+sections proved elusive. An RCU implementation permitting general
+blocking in read-side critical sections appeared [PaulEMcKenney2006c],
+Robert Olsson described an RCU-protected trie-hash combination
+[RobertOlsson2006a].
+
+2007 saw the journal version of the award-winning RCU paper from 2006
+[ThomasEHart2007a], as well as a paper demonstrating use of Promela
+and Spin to mechanically verify an optimization to Oleg Nesterov's
+QRCU [PaulEMcKenney2007QRCUspin], a design document describing
+preemptible RCU [PaulEMcKenney2007PreemptibleRCU], and the three-part
+LWN "What is RCU?" series [PaulEMcKenney2007WhatIsRCUFundamentally,
+PaulEMcKenney2008WhatIsRCUUsage, and PaulEMcKenney2008WhatIsRCUAPI].
+
Bibtex Entries
@article{Kung80
,Year="1991"
}
+@phdthesis{HMassalinPhD
+,author="H. Massalin"
+,title="Synthesis: An Efficient Implementation of Fundamental Operating
+System Services"
+,school="Columbia University"
+,address="New York, NY"
+,year="1992"
+,annotation="
+ Mondo optimizing compiler.
+ Wait-free stuff.
+ Good advice: defer work to avoid synchronization.
+"
+}
+
@unpublished{Jacobson93
,author="Van Jacobson"
,title="Avoid Read-Side Locking Via Delayed Free"
,Address="New Orleans, LA"
}
+@conference{Pu95a,
+Author = "Calton Pu and Tito Autrey and Andrew Black and Charles Consel and
+Crispin Cowan and Jon Inouye and Lakshmi Kethana and Jonathan Walpole and
+Ke Zhang",
+Title = "Optimistic Incremental Specialization: Streamlining a Commercial
+Operating System",
+Booktitle = "15\textsuperscript{th} ACM Symposium on
+Operating Systems Principles (SOSP'95)",
+address = "Copper Mountain, CO",
+month="December",
+year="1995",
+pages="314-321",
+annotation="
+ Uses a replugger, but with a flag to signal when people are
+ using the resource at hand. Only one reader at a time.
+"
+}
+
+@conference{Cowan96a,
+Author = "Crispin Cowan and Tito Autrey and Charles Krasic and
+Calton Pu and Jonathan Walpole",
+Title = "Fast Concurrent Dynamic Linking for an Adaptive Operating System",
+Booktitle = "International Conference on Configurable Distributed Systems
+(ICCDS'96)",
+address = "Annapolis, MD",
+month="May",
+year="1996",
+pages="108",
+isbn="0-8186-7395-8",
+annotation="
+ Uses a replugger, but with a counter to signal when people are
+ using the resource at hand. Allows multiple readers.
+"
+}
+
@techreport{Slingwine95
,author="John D. Slingwine and Paul E. McKenney"
,title="Apparatus and Method for Achieving Reduced Overhead Mutual
[Viewed June 23, 2004]"
}
+@conference{Michael02a
+,author="Maged M. Michael"
+,title="Safe Memory Reclamation for Dynamic Lock-Free Objects Using Atomic
+Reads and Writes"
+,Year="2002"
+,Month="August"
+,booktitle="{Proceedings of the 21\textsuperscript{st} Annual ACM
+Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing}"
+,pages="21-30"
+,annotation="
+ Each thread keeps an array of pointers to items that it is
+ currently referencing. Sort of an inside-out garbage collection
+ mechanism, but one that requires the accessing code to explicitly
+ state its needs. Also requires read-side memory barriers on
+ most architectures.
+"
+}
+
+@conference{Michael02b
+,author="Maged M. Michael"
+,title="High Performance Dynamic Lock-Free Hash Tables and List-Based Sets"
+,Year="2002"
+,Month="August"
+,booktitle="{Proceedings of the 14\textsuperscript{th} Annual ACM
+Symposium on Parallel
+Algorithms and Architecture}"
+,pages="73-82"
+,annotation="
+ Like the title says...
+"
+}
+
+@InProceedings{HerlihyLM02
+,author={Maurice Herlihy and Victor Luchangco and Mark Moir}
+,title="The Repeat Offender Problem: A Mechanism for Supporting Dynamic-Sized,
+Lock-Free Data Structures"
+,booktitle={Proceedings of 16\textsuperscript{th} International
+Symposium on Distributed Computing}
+,year=2002
+,month="October"
+,pages="339-353"
+}
+
@article{Appavoo03a
,author="J. Appavoo and K. Hui and C. A. N. Soules and R. W. Wisniewski and
D. M. {Da Silva} and O. Krieger and M. A. Auslander and D. J. Edelsohn and
Realtime turns into making RCU yet more realtime friendly.
"
}
+
+@conference{ThomasEHart2006a
+,Author="Thomas E. Hart and Paul E. McKenney and Angela Demke Brown"
+,Title="Making Lockless Synchronization Fast: Performance Implications
+of Memory Reclamation"
+,Booktitle="20\textsuperscript{th} {IEEE} International Parallel and
+Distributed Processing Symposium"
+,month="April"
+,year="2006"
+,day="25-29"
+,address="Rhodes, Greece"
+,annotation="
+ Compares QSBR (AKA "classic RCU"), HPBR, EBR, and lock-free
+ reference counting.
+"
+}
+
+@Conference{PaulEMcKenney2006b
+,Author="Paul E. McKenney and Dipankar Sarma and Ingo Molnar and
+Suparna Bhattacharya"
+,Title="Extending RCU for Realtime and Embedded Workloads"
+,Booktitle="{Ottawa Linux Symposium}"
+,Month="July"
+,Year="2006"
+,pages="v2 123-138"
+,note="Available:
+\url{http://www.linuxsymposium.org/2006/view_abstract.php?content_key=184}
+\url{http://www.rdrop.com/users/paulmck/RCU/OLSrtRCU.2006.08.11a.pdf}
+[Viewed January 1, 2007]"
+,annotation="
+ Described how to improve the -rt implementation of realtime RCU.
+"
+}
+
+@unpublished{PaulEMcKenney2006c
+,Author="Paul E. McKenney"
+,Title="Sleepable {RCU}"
+,month="October"
+,day="9"
+,year="2006"
+,note="Available:
+\url{http://lwn.net/Articles/202847/}
+Revised:
+\url{http://www.rdrop.com/users/paulmck/RCU/srcu.2007.01.14a.pdf}
+[Viewed August 21, 2006]"
+,annotation="
+ LWN article introducing SRCU.
+"
+}
+
+@unpublished{RobertOlsson2006a
+,Author="Robert Olsson and Stefan Nilsson"
+,Title="{TRASH}: A dynamic {LC}-trie and hash data structure"
+,month="August"
+,day="18"
+,year="2006"
+,note="Available:
+\url{http://www.nada.kth.se/~snilsson/public/papers/trash/trash.pdf}
+[Viewed February 24, 2007]"
+,annotation="
+ RCU-protected dynamic trie-hash combination.
+"
+}
+
+@unpublished{ThomasEHart2007a
+,Author="Thomas E. Hart and Paul E. McKenney and Angela Demke Brown and Jonathan Walpole"
+,Title="Performance of memory reclamation for lockless synchronization"
+,journal="J. Parallel Distrib. Comput."
+,year="2007"
+,note="To appear in J. Parallel Distrib. Comput.
+ \url{doi=10.1016/j.jpdc.2007.04.010}"
+,annotation={
+ Compares QSBR (AKA "classic RCU"), HPBR, EBR, and lock-free
+ reference counting. Journal version of ThomasEHart2006a.
+}
+}
+
+@unpublished{PaulEMcKenney2007QRCUspin
+,Author="Paul E. McKenney"
+,Title="Using Promela and Spin to verify parallel algorithms"
+,month="August"
+,day="1"
+,year="2007"
+,note="Available:
+\url{http://lwn.net/Articles/243851/}
+[Viewed September 8, 2007]"
+,annotation="
+ LWN article describing Promela and spin, and also using Oleg
+ Nesterov's QRCU as an example (with Paul McKenney's fastpath).
+"
+}
+
+@unpublished{PaulEMcKenney2007PreemptibleRCU
+,Author="Paul E. McKenney"
+,Title="The design of preemptible read-copy-update"
+,month="October"
+,day="8"
+,year="2007"
+,note="Available:
+\url{http://lwn.net/Articles/253651/}
+[Viewed October 25, 2007]"
+,annotation="
+ LWN article describing the design of preemptible RCU.
+"
+}
+
+########################################################################
+#
+# "What is RCU?" LWN series.
+#
+
+@unpublished{PaulEMcKenney2007WhatIsRCUFundamentally
+,Author="Paul E. McKenney and Jonathan Walpole"
+,Title="What is {RCU}, Fundamentally?"
+,month="December"
+,day="17"
+,year="2007"
+,note="Available:
+\url{http://lwn.net/Articles/262464/}
+[Viewed December 27, 2007]"
+,annotation="
+ Lays out the three basic components of RCU: (1) publish-subscribe,
+ (2) wait for pre-existing readers to complete, and (2) maintain
+ multiple versions.
+"
+}
+
+@unpublished{PaulEMcKenney2008WhatIsRCUUsage
+,Author="Paul E. McKenney"
+,Title="What is {RCU}? Part 2: Usage"
+,month="January"
+,day="4"
+,year="2008"
+,note="Available:
+\url{http://lwn.net/Articles/263130/}
+[Viewed January 4, 2008]"
+,annotation="
+ Lays out six uses of RCU:
+ 1. RCU is a Reader-Writer Lock Replacement
+ 2. RCU is a Restricted Reference-Counting Mechanism
+ 3. RCU is a Bulk Reference-Counting Mechanism
+ 4. RCU is a Poor Man's Garbage Collector
+ 5. RCU is a Way of Providing Existence Guarantees
+ 6. RCU is a Way of Waiting for Things to Finish
+"
+}
+
+@unpublished{PaulEMcKenney2008WhatIsRCUAPI
+,Author="Paul E. McKenney"
+,Title="{RCU} part 3: the {RCU} {API}"
+,month="January"
+,day="17"
+,year="2008"
+,note="Available:
+\url{http://lwn.net/Articles/264090/}
+[Viewed January 10, 2008]"
+,annotation="
+ Gives an overview of the Linux-kernel RCU API and a brief annotated RCU
+ bibliography.
+"
+}
+
+@article{DinakarGuniguntala2008IBMSysJ
+,author="D. Guniguntala and P. E. McKenney and J. Triplett and J. Walpole"
+,title="The read-copy-update mechanism for supporting real-time applications on shared-memory multiprocessor systems with {Linux}"
+,Year="2008"
+,Month="April"
+,journal="IBM Systems Journal"
+,volume="47"
+,number="2"
+,pages="@@-@@"
+,annotation="
+ RCU, realtime RCU, sleepable RCU, performance.
+"
+}
+
+@article{PaulEMcKenney2008RCUOSR
+,author="Paul E. McKenney and Jonathan Walpole"
+,title="Introducing technology into the {Linux} kernel: a case study"
+,Year="2008"
+,journal="SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev."
+,volume="42"
+,number="5"
+,pages="4--17"
+,issn="0163-5980"
+,doi={http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1400097.1400099}
+,publisher="ACM"
+,address="New York, NY, USA"
+,annotation={
+ Linux changed RCU to a far greater degree than RCU has changed Linux.
+}
+}
+
+@unpublished{PaulEMcKenney2008HierarchicalRCU
+,Author="Paul E. McKenney"
+,Title="Hierarchical {RCU}"
+,month="November"
+,day="3"
+,year="2008"
+,note="Available:
+\url{http://lwn.net/Articles/305782/}
+[Viewed November 6, 2008]"
+,annotation="
+ RCU with combining-tree-based grace-period detection,
+ permitting it to handle thousands of CPUs.
+"
+}
+
+@conference{PaulEMcKenney2009MaliciousURCU
+,Author="Paul E. McKenney"
+,Title="Using a Malicious User-Level {RCU} to Torture {RCU}-Based Algorithms"
+,Booktitle="linux.conf.au 2009"
+,month="January"
+,year="2009"
+,address="Hobart, Australia"
+,note="Available:
+\url{http://www.rdrop.com/users/paulmck/RCU/urcutorture.2009.01.22a.pdf}
+[Viewed February 2, 2009]"
+,annotation="
+ Realtime RCU and torture-testing RCU uses.
+"
+}
+
+@unpublished{MathieuDesnoyers2009URCU
+,Author="Mathieu Desnoyers"
+,Title="[{RFC} git tree] Userspace {RCU} (urcu) for {Linux}"
+,month="February"
+,day="5"
+,year="2009"
+,note="Available:
+\url{http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/2/5/572}
+\url{git://lttng.org/userspace-rcu.git}
+[Viewed February 20, 2009]"
+,annotation="
+ Mathieu Desnoyers's user-space RCU implementation.
+ git://lttng.org/userspace-rcu.git
+"
+}
+
+@unpublished{PaulEMcKenney2009BloatWatchRCU
+,Author="Paul E. McKenney"
+,Title="{RCU}: The {Bloatwatch} Edition"
+,month="March"
+,day="17"
+,year="2009"
+,note="Available:
+\url{http://lwn.net/Articles/323929/}
+[Viewed March 20, 2009]"
+,annotation="
+ Uniprocessor assumptions allow simplified RCU implementation.
+"
+}
git://ftp.safe.ca / safe / jmp / linux-2.6 / blobdiff