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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/RCU/arrayRCU.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/RCU/arrayRCU.txt | 20 |
1 files changed, 16 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/arrayRCU.txt b/Documentation/RCU/arrayRCU.txt index 453ebe6953ee..f05a9afb2c39 100644 --- a/Documentation/RCU/arrayRCU.txt +++ b/Documentation/RCU/arrayRCU.txt @@ -10,7 +10,19 @@ also be used to protect arrays. Three situations are as follows: 3. Resizeable Arrays -Each of these situations are discussed below. +Each of these three situations involves an RCU-protected pointer to an +array that is separately indexed. It might be tempting to consider use +of RCU to instead protect the index into an array, however, this use +case is -not- supported. The problem with RCU-protected indexes into +arrays is that compilers can play way too many optimization games with +integers, which means that the rules governing handling of these indexes +are far more trouble than they are worth. If RCU-protected indexes into +arrays prove to be particularly valuable (which they have not thus far), +explicit cooperation from the compiler will be required to permit them +to be safely used. + +That aside, each of the three RCU-protected pointer situations are +described in the following sections. Situation 1: Hash Tables @@ -36,9 +48,9 @@ Quick Quiz: Why is it so important that updates be rare when Situation 3: Resizeable Arrays Use of RCU for resizeable arrays is demonstrated by the grow_ary() -function used by the System V IPC code. The array is used to map from -semaphore, message-queue, and shared-memory IDs to the data structure -that represents the corresponding IPC construct. The grow_ary() +function formerly used by the System V IPC code. The array is used +to map from semaphore, message-queue, and shared-memory IDs to the data +structure that represents the corresponding IPC construct. The grow_ary() function does not acquire any locks; instead its caller must hold the ids->sem semaphore. |