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+Generic Mutex Subsystem
+
+started by Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
+updated by Davidlohr Bueso <davidlohr@hp.com>
+
+What are mutexes?
+-----------------
+
+In the Linux kernel, mutexes refer to a particular locking primitive
+that enforces serialization on shared memory systems, and not only to
+the generic term referring to 'mutual exclusion' found in academia
+or similar theoretical text books. Mutexes are sleeping locks which
+behave similarly to binary semaphores, and were introduced in 2006[1]
+as an alternative to these. This new data structure provided a number
+of advantages, including simpler interfaces, and at that time smaller
+code (see Disadvantages).
+
+[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/164802/
+
+Implementation
+--------------
+
+Mutexes are represented by 'struct mutex', defined in include/linux/mutex.h
+and implemented in kernel/locking/mutex.c. These locks use a three
+state atomic counter (->count) to represent the different possible
+transitions that can occur during the lifetime of a lock:
+
+	  1: unlocked
+	  0: locked, no waiters
+   negative: locked, with potential waiters
+
+In its most basic form it also includes a wait-queue and a spinlock
+that serializes access to it. CONFIG_SMP systems can also include
+a pointer to the lock task owner (->owner) as well as a spinner MCS
+lock (->osq), both described below in (ii).
+
+When acquiring a mutex, there are three possible paths that can be
+taken, depending on the state of the lock:
+
+(i) fastpath: tries to atomically acquire the lock by decrementing the
+    counter. If it was already taken by another task it goes to the next
+    possible path. This logic is architecture specific. On x86-64, the
+    locking fastpath is 2 instructions:
+
+    0000000000000e10 <mutex_lock>:
+    e21:   f0 ff 0b                lock decl (%rbx)
+    e24:   79 08                   jns    e2e <mutex_lock+0x1e>
+
+   the unlocking fastpath is equally tight:
+
+    0000000000000bc0 <mutex_unlock>:
+    bc8:   f0 ff 07                lock incl (%rdi)
+    bcb:   7f 0a                   jg     bd7 <mutex_unlock+0x17>
+
+
+(ii) midpath: aka optimistic spinning, tries to spin for acquisition
+     while the lock owner is running and there are no other tasks ready
+     to run that have higher priority (need_resched). The rationale is
+     that if the lock owner is running, it is likely to release the lock
+     soon. The mutex spinners are queued up using MCS lock so that only
+     one spinner can compete for the mutex.
+
+     The MCS lock (proposed by Mellor-Crummey and Scott) is a simple spinlock
+     with the desirable properties of being fair and with each cpu trying
+     to acquire the lock spinning on a local variable. It avoids expensive
+     cacheline bouncing that common test-and-set spinlock implementations
+     incur. An MCS-like lock is specially tailored for optimistic spinning
+     for sleeping lock implementation. An important feature of the customized
+     MCS lock is that it has the extra property that spinners are able to exit
+     the MCS spinlock queue when they need to reschedule. This further helps
+     avoid situations where MCS spinners that need to reschedule would continue
+     waiting to spin on mutex owner, only to go directly to slowpath upon
+     obtaining the MCS lock.
+
+
+(iii) slowpath: last resort, if the lock is still unable to be acquired,
+      the task is added to the wait-queue and sleeps until woken up by the
+      unlock path. Under normal circumstances it blocks as TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE.
+
+While formally kernel mutexes are sleepable locks, it is path (ii) that
+makes them more practically a hybrid type. By simply not interrupting a
+task and busy-waiting for a few cycles instead of immediately sleeping,
+the performance of this lock has been seen to significantly improve a
+number of workloads. Note that this technique is also used for rw-semaphores.
+
+Semantics
+---------
+
+The mutex subsystem checks and enforces the following rules:
+
+    - Only one task can hold the mutex at a time.
+    - Only the owner can unlock the mutex.
+    - Multiple unlocks are not permitted.
+    - Recursive locking/unlocking is not permitted.
+    - A mutex must only be initialized via the API (see below).
+    - A task may not exit with a mutex held.
+    - Memory areas where held locks reside must not be freed.
+    - Held mutexes must not be reinitialized.
+    - Mutexes may not be used in hardware or software interrupt
+      contexts such as tasklets and timers.
+
+These semantics are fully enforced when CONFIG DEBUG_MUTEXES is enabled.
+In addition, the mutex debugging code also implements a number of other
+features that make lock debugging easier and faster:
+
+    - Uses symbolic names of mutexes, whenever they are printed
+      in debug output.
+    - Point-of-acquire tracking, symbolic lookup of function names,
+      list of all locks held in the system, printout of them.
+    - Owner tracking.
+    - Detects self-recursing locks and prints out all relevant info.
+    - Detects multi-task circular deadlocks and prints out all affected
+      locks and tasks (and only those tasks).
+
+
+Interfaces
+----------
+Statically define the mutex:
+   DEFINE_MUTEX(name);
+
+Dynamically initialize the mutex:
+   mutex_init(mutex);
+
+Acquire the mutex, uninterruptible:
+   void mutex_lock(struct mutex *lock);
+   void mutex_lock_nested(struct mutex *lock, unsigned int subclass);
+   int  mutex_trylock(struct mutex *lock);
+
+Acquire the mutex, interruptible:
+   int mutex_lock_interruptible_nested(struct mutex *lock,
+				       unsigned int subclass);
+   int mutex_lock_interruptible(struct mutex *lock);
+
+Acquire the mutex, interruptible, if dec to 0:
+   int atomic_dec_and_mutex_lock(atomic_t *cnt, struct mutex *lock);
+
+Unlock the mutex:
+   void mutex_unlock(struct mutex *lock);
+
+Test if the mutex is taken:
+   int mutex_is_locked(struct mutex *lock);
+
+Disadvantages
+-------------
+
+Unlike its original design and purpose, 'struct mutex' is larger than
+most locks in the kernel. E.g: on x86-64 it is 40 bytes, almost twice
+as large as 'struct semaphore' (24 bytes) and tied, along with rwsems,
+for the largest lock in the kernel. Larger structure sizes mean more
+CPU cache and memory footprint.
+
+When to use mutexes
+-------------------
+
+Unless the strict semantics of mutexes are unsuitable and/or the critical
+region prevents the lock from being shared, always prefer them to any other
+locking primitive.