[PATCH v5] arm64: Introduce IRQ stack

Jungseok Lee jungseoklee85 at gmail.com
Tue Oct 20 08:05:01 PDT 2015


On Oct 20, 2015, at 7:05 PM, James Morse wrote:
> Hi Jungseok,

Hi James,

> On 17/10/15 15:27, Jungseok Lee wrote:
>> Currently, kernel context and interrupts are handled using a single
>> kernel stack navigated by sp_el1. This forces a system to use 16KB
>> stack, not 8KB one. This restriction makes low memory platforms
>> suffer from memory pressure accompanied by performance degradation.
>> 
>> This patch addresses the issue as introducing a separate percpu IRQ
>> stack to handle both hard and soft interrupts with two ground rules:
>> 
>>  - Utilize sp_el0 in EL1 context, which is not used currently
>>  - Do not complicate current_thread_info calculation
>> 
>> It is a core concept to directly retrieve struct thread_info from
>> sp_el0. This approach helps to prevent text section size from being
>> increased largely as removing masking operation using THREAD_SIZE
>> in tons of places.
> 
> I was worried we could end up in schedule() while on the irq stack. This
> can't happen, just to save anyone else the trip down the rabbit-hole:
> 
> Q> If TIF_NEED_RESCHED is set, and we have multiple calls to el1_irq() on
> the same stack - will the most-recent one to exit call el1_preempt() ->
> preempt_schedule_irq()?
> 
> A> No, because the code to check if TIF_NEED_RESCHED is set, also checks
> preempt_count is zero, and __do_softirq() increases by softirq_offset (via
> __local_bh_disable_ip()) before re-enabling interrupts, so there is no
> 'gap' in recursive use of the irq_stack where preempt_count can be zero.

This clearly explains why the top-bit method, not count based one, is valid
in irq_stack_entry. How about adding this Q & A to comments in irq_stack_entry
or commit msg?

>> ---
>> I've used Cc', not Tested-by tag, from James, since there is a gap
>> between v4 and v5.
> 
> Re-tested, with both 4K and 64K pages.
> Tested-By: James Morse <james.morse at arm.com>

Thanks!

> I also need to test this on top of Akashi Takahiros's series - in isolation
> this patch only lets perf/dump_stack() unwind as far as el1_irq(). (It
> would be good to note that dependency in this comments/changelog section -
> so that they get merged in the right order!)

Agree. I will write down the information.

>> 
>> Changes since v4:
>> - Supported 64KB page system
>> - Introduced IRQ_STACK_* macro, per Catalin 
>> - Rebased on top of for-next/core
>> 
>> Changes since v3:
>> - Expanded stack trace to support IRQ stack
>> - Added more comments
>> 
>> Changes since v2:
>> - Optmised current_thread_info function as removing masking operation
>>  and volatile keyword, per James and Catalin
>> - Reworked irq re-enterance check logic using top-bit comparison of
>>  stacks, per James
>> - Added sp_el0 update in cpu_resume, per James
>> - Selected HAVE_IRQ_EXIT_ON_IRQ_STACK to expose this feature explicitly
>> - Added a Tested-by tag from James
>> - Added comments on sp_el0 as a helper messeage
>> 
>> Changes since v1:
>> - Rebased on top of v4.3-rc1
>> - Removed Kconfig about IRQ stack, per James
>> - Used PERCPU for IRQ stack, per James
>> - Tried to allocate IRQ stack when CPU is about to start up, per James
>> - Moved sp_el0 update into kernel_entry macro, per James
>> - Dropped S_SP removal patch, per Mark and James
>> 
>> arch/arm64/Kconfig                   |  1 +
>> arch/arm64/include/asm/irq.h         | 27 ++++++++++
>> arch/arm64/include/asm/thread_info.h | 10 +++-
>> arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S            | 42 ++++++++++++++--
>> arch/arm64/kernel/head.S             |  5 ++
>> arch/arm64/kernel/irq.c              | 24 +++++++++
>> arch/arm64/kernel/sleep.S            |  3 ++
>> arch/arm64/kernel/smp.c              | 13 ++++-
>> 8 files changed, 116 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)
>> 
>> diff --git a/arch/arm64/include/asm/irq.h b/arch/arm64/include/asm/irq.h
>> index 0916929..2755b2f 100644
>> --- a/arch/arm64/include/asm/irq.h
>> +++ b/arch/arm64/include/asm/irq.h
>> @@ -1,14 +1,40 @@
>> #ifndef __ASM_IRQ_H
>> #define __ASM_IRQ_H
>> 
>> +#ifndef CONFIG_ARM64_64K_PAGES
>> +#define IRQ_STACK_SIZE_ORDER	2
>> +#endif
>> +
>> +#define IRQ_STACK_SIZE		16384
>> +#define IRQ_STACK_START_SP	(IRQ_STACK_SIZE - 16)
> 
> If the plan is to have the irq stack the same size, it would be good to use
> one definition in the other - just to make it obvious. e.g.
> #define IRQ_STACK_SIZE	THREAD_SIZE

Okay, I will update it.

> Are these used in assembly code? If not, they could go after the ifndef
> __ASSEMBLY__.

entry.S for IRQ re-entrace check based on the top-bit comparison ;)

>> +
>> +#ifndef __ASSEMBLY__
>> +
>> +#include <linux/gfp.h>
>> #include <linux/irqchip/arm-gic-acpi.h>
>> +#include <linux/slab.h>
>> 
>> #include <asm-generic/irq.h>
>> 
>> +#if IRQ_STACK_SIZE >= PAGE_SIZE
>> +static inline void *__alloc_irq_stack(void)
>> +{
>> +       return (void *)__get_free_pages(THREADINFO_GFP | __GFP_ZERO,
>> +                                       IRQ_STACK_SIZE_ORDER);
> 
> Need to include linux/thread_info.h for THREADINFO_GFP, and linux/gfp.h for
> __GFP_ZERO, although, depending on CONFIG_DEBUG_STACK_USAGE THREADINFO_GFP
> includes __GFP_ZERO….

I will clean up.

Just note that I use __GFP_ZERO explicitly to align with IRQ_stack in BSS.

>> +}
>> +#else
>> +static inline void *__alloc_irq_stack(void)
>> +{
>> +       return kmalloc(IRQ_STACK_SIZE, THREADINFO_GFP | __GFP_ZERO);
>> +}
>> +#endif
>> +
> 
> Why are these in the header file? They are only used in kernel/irq.c…

Make sense. I will move the code to irq.c.

>> struct pt_regs;
>> 
>> extern void set_handle_irq(void (*handle_irq)(struct pt_regs *));
>> 
>> +extern int alloc_irq_stack(unsigned int cpu);
>> +
>> static inline void acpi_irq_init(void)
>> {
>> 	/*
>> @@ -21,3 +47,4 @@ static inline void acpi_irq_init(void)
>> #define acpi_irq_init acpi_irq_init
>> 
>> #endif
>> +#endif
> 
> [SNIP]
> 
>> diff --git a/arch/arm64/kernel/irq.c b/arch/arm64/kernel/irq.c
>> index 9f17ec0..13fe8f4 100644
>> --- a/arch/arm64/kernel/irq.c
>> +++ b/arch/arm64/kernel/irq.c
>> @@ -30,6 +30,8 @@
>> 
>> unsigned long irq_err_count;
>> 
>> +DEFINE_PER_CPU(void *, irq_stacks);
>> +
>> int arch_show_interrupts(struct seq_file *p, int prec)
>> {
>> 	show_ipi_list(p, prec);
>> @@ -47,9 +49,31 @@ void __init set_handle_irq(void (*handle_irq)(struct pt_regs *))
>> 	handle_arch_irq = handle_irq;
>> }
>> 
>> +static char boot_irq_stack[IRQ_STACK_SIZE] __aligned(IRQ_STACK_SIZE);
> 
> Is kmalloc() not available this early? Regardless:
> As Catalin is happy with the Image size increase [0], this could become
> something like:
>> DEFINE_PER_CPU(union thread_union, irq_stack);
> Which will remove the need to __alloc_irq_stack()s.

We cannot rely on static allocation using percpu in case of 4KB page system.
Since ARM64 utilizes generic setup_per_cpu_areas(), tpidr_el1 is PAGE_SIZE
aligned. That is, IRQ stack is allocated with PAGE_SIZE alignment for secondary
cores. However, the top-bit method works well under the assumption that IRQ
stack is IRQ_STACK_SIZE aligned. It leads to IRQ re-entrance check failure.

As expected, the static allocation should be valid on 64KB page system.

> (It looks like the size-increase is lost in the size-reduction due to
> smaller code in current_thread_info()! The old version I wrote didn't have
> this, so it stuck-out a lot more.)

Yeah, it saves us from Image size issue.

Thanks!

Best Regards
Jungseok Lee


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