[dpdk-dev] [PATCH v1 1/2] ring: keep the deterministic order allowing retry to work

[Gavin Hu <gavin.hu@arm.com>]

Use case scenario:
1) Thread 1 is enqueuing. It reads prod.head and gets stalled for some
   reasons (running out of cpu time, preempted,...)
2) Thread 2 is enqueuing. It succeeds in enqueuing and moves prod.head
   forward.
3) Thread 3 is dequeuing. It succeeds in dequeuing and moves the cons.tail
   beyond the prod.head read by thread 1.
4) Thread 1 is re-scheduled. It reads cons.tail.

cpu1(producer)      cpu2(producer)          cpu3(consumer)
load r->prod.head
    ^               load r->prod.head
    |               load r->cons.tail
    |               store r->prod.head(+n)
  stalled           <-- enqueue ----->
    |               store r->prod.tail(+n)
    |                                        load r->cons.head
    |                                        load r->prod.tail
    |                                        store r->cons.head(+n)
    |                                        <...dequeue.....>
    v                                        store r->cons.tail(+n)
load r->cons.tail

For thread 1, the __atomic_compare_exchange_n detects the outdated
prod.head and retry the flow with the new one. This retry flow works ok on
strong ordering platform(eg:x86). But for weak ordering platforms(arm,
ppc), loading cons.tail and prod.head might be re-ordered, prod.head is new
but cons.tail becomes too old, the retry flow, based on the detection of
outdated head, does not trigger as expected, thus the outdate cons.tail
causes wrong free_entries.

Similarly, for dequeuing, outdated prod.tail leads to wrong avail_entries.

The fix is to keep the deterministic order of two loads allowing the retry
to work.

Run the ring perf test on the following testbed:
HW: ThunderX2 B0 CPU CN9975 v2.0, 2 sockets, 28core, 4 threads/core, 2.5GHz
OS: Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS, Kernel: 4.15.0-36-generic
DPDK: 18.08, Configuration: arm64-armv8a-linuxapp-gcc
gcc: 8.1.0
$sudo ./test/test/test -l 16-19,44-47,72-75,100-103 -n 4 \
--socket-mem=1024 -- -i

Without the patch:
*** Testing using two physical cores ***
SP/SC bulk enq/dequeue (size: 8): 5.64
MP/MC bulk enq/dequeue (size: 8): 9.58
SP/SC bulk enq/dequeue (size: 32): 1.98
MP/MC bulk enq/dequeue (size: 32): 2.30

With the patch:
*** Testing using two physical cores ***
SP/SC bulk enq/dequeue (size: 8): 5.75
MP/MC bulk enq/dequeue (size: 8): 10.18
SP/SC bulk enq/dequeue (size: 32): 1.80
MP/MC bulk enq/dequeue (size: 32): 2.34

The results showed the thread fence degrade the performance slightly, but
it is required for correctness.

Fixes: 39368ebfc6 ("ring: introduce C11 memory model barrier option")
Cc: stable@dpdk.org

Signed-off-by: Gavin Hu <gavin.hu@arm.com>
Reviewed-by: Honnappa Nagarahalli <Honnappa.Nagarahalli@arm.com>
Reviewed-by: Steve Capper <steve.capper@arm.com>
Reviewed-by: Ola Liljedahl <Ola.Liljedahl@arm.com>
---
 lib/librte_ring/rte_ring_c11_mem.h | 6 ++++++
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)

diff --git a/lib/librte_ring/rte_ring_c11_mem.h b/lib/librte_ring/rte_ring_c11_mem.h
index 7bc74a4..dc49a99 100644
--- a/lib/librte_ring/rte_ring_c11_mem.h
+++ b/lib/librte_ring/rte_ring_c11_mem.h
@@ -66,6 +66,9 @@ __rte_ring_move_prod_head(struct rte_ring *r, unsigned int is_sp,
 		/* Reset n to the initial burst count */
 		n = max;
 
+		/* Ensure the head is read before tail */
+		__atomic_thread_fence(__ATOMIC_ACQUIRE);
+
 		/* load-acquire synchronize with store-release of ht->tail
 		 * in update_tail.
 		 */
@@ -139,6 +142,9 @@ __rte_ring_move_cons_head(struct rte_ring *r, int is_sc,
 		/* Restore n as it may change every loop */
 		n = max;
 
+		/* Ensure the head is read before tail */
+		__atomic_thread_fence(__ATOMIC_ACQUIRE);
+
 		/* this load-acquire synchronize with store-release of ht->tail
 		 * in update_tail.
 		 */
-- 
2.7.4