NMI for ARC

[Andy Lutomirski]

On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Vineet Gupta
<Vineet.Gupta1 at synopsys.com> wrote:
> On 09/28/2016 11:43 PM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 06:20:29PM -0700, Vineet Gupta wrote:
>>> On 09/28/2016 03:26 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>       user    irq     nmi
>>
>>       |
>>       |
>>       `-----> .
>>               |
>>               |
>>               |
>>               `-----> .
>>                       |
>>                       |
>>               . <-----'
>>       . <-----'
>>       |
>>       |
>>
>> So what Andy is saying is that NMI context never sets TIF_NEED_RESCHED,
>
> Can we we be absolutely sure about that. A perf intr, vmalloc based mmap can go
> thru various hoops and. Is it not possible that it hits a reschedule, setting
> TIF_NEED_RESCHED
>
>> this means that return from NMI never needs to check for preemption
>> etc..
>
> I don't think this implies from prev one. In my example, timer interrupt triggers
> a TIF_NEED_RESCHED and irq_exit -> __do_softirq() it hits the perf intr
>
>> Now your return from IRQ obviously should, the normal way. If the IRQ
>> return gets interrupted by the NMI nothing special should occur. The
>> return from NMI should simply resume the return from IRQ.
>>
>> So I'm a little confused by your timer interrupt example, it _should_ do
>> the preemption, the nested interrupt (NMI) will return to the regular
>> interrupt which should resume its normal return preemption or not.
>
> So lets first see how a single priority intr works on ARC (maybe on other arches
> as well).
>
> 1. task t1 enters kernel syscall (Trap Exception on ARC), handler drops down to
> pure kernel model and proceeds into syscall handler.
> 2. while in handler, some intr is taken, which causes a reschedule to task t2.
> 3. t2's control flow returns (say it was in syscall when originally
> scheduled-out). It needs to return to user mode but cpu needs to return from
> active interrupt. So we return to user mode, "riding" the intr return path. Means
> intr in step #2 returns to a different PC and execution mode (user vs. kernel etc).
>

For the benefit of people who don't know what an "active interrupt" is
(x86 has no such concept in hardware), can you elaborate a bit?  On
x86, for all practical purposes [1], an interrupt kicks the CPU into
kernel mode, and the kernel is free to return however it likes.  It
can do a standard interrupt return right back to the interrupted
context, but it can also switch stacks and do whatever some other
thread was doing.

> Now the same scheme doesn't work out of the box when u have intr and nmi. We have
> to actively ensure that nmi doesn't lead to a __schedule() sans user code. And
> this is done by bumping preempt_count(NMI_OFFSET) in entry of nmi handler.

The perf NMI code won't schedule.  In general, you just need to ensure
that is_nmi() is true.  Any kernel code that touches normal locks,
schedules, gets page faults without extreme caution, etc. needs to be
aware that nmis are special.


[1] There's an exception on 64-bit AMD CPUs because AMD blew it.
Also, x86 NMI return is itself severely overcomplicated because we don't
have good control over NMI nesting.