>There is both a qualitative difference and quantitative difference in a
>lockless algorithm as described versus one that uses locking. Most
>importantly for Linux, these algorithms in practice have better performance
>characteristics.
>
Do you have benchmark numbers that compare "lockless" and locking
algorithms on large MP systems?
For example, how much faster is one 'lock;cmpxchg' compared to
'spin_lock();if (x==var) var = y;spin_unlock();'.
So far I assumed that for spinlock that are only held for a few cycles,
the cacheline trashing dominates, and not the spinning.
I've avoided to replace spin_lock+inc+spin_unlock with atomic_inc().
(Just look at the needed memory barriers: smp_mb__after_clear_bit & friends)
RCU uses per-cpu queues that are really lockless and avoid the cache
trashing, that is a real win.
--
Manfred
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