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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/powerpc/transactional_memory.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/powerpc/transactional_memory.txt | 32 |
1 files changed, 16 insertions, 16 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/powerpc/transactional_memory.txt b/Documentation/powerpc/transactional_memory.txt index ded69794a..ba0a2a4a5 100644 --- a/Documentation/powerpc/transactional_memory.txt +++ b/Documentation/powerpc/transactional_memory.txt @@ -74,22 +74,23 @@ Causes of transaction aborts Syscalls ======== -Performing syscalls from within transaction is not recommended, and can lead -to unpredictable results. +Syscalls made from within an active transaction will not be performed and the +transaction will be doomed by the kernel with the failure code TM_CAUSE_SYSCALL +| TM_CAUSE_PERSISTENT. -Syscalls do not by design abort transactions, but beware: The kernel code will -not be running in transactional state. The effect of syscalls will always -remain visible, but depending on the call they may abort your transaction as a -side-effect, read soon-to-be-aborted transactional data that should not remain -invisible, etc. If you constantly retry a transaction that constantly aborts -itself by calling a syscall, you'll have a livelock & make no progress. +Syscalls made from within a suspended transaction are performed as normal and +the transaction is not explicitly doomed by the kernel. However, what the +kernel does to perform the syscall may result in the transaction being doomed +by the hardware. The syscall is performed in suspended mode so any side +effects will be persistent, independent of transaction success or failure. No +guarantees are provided by the kernel about which syscalls will affect +transaction success. -Simple syscalls (e.g. sigprocmask()) "could" be OK. Even things like write() -from, say, printf() should be OK as long as the kernel does not access any -memory that was accessed transactionally. - -Consider any syscalls that happen to work as debug-only -- not recommended for -production use. Best to queue them up till after the transaction is over. +Care must be taken when relying on syscalls to abort during active transactions +if the calls are made via a library. Libraries may cache values (which may +give the appearance of success) or perform operations that cause transaction +failure before entering the kernel (which may produce different failure codes). +Examples are glibc's getpid() and lazy symbol resolution. Signals @@ -176,8 +177,7 @@ kernel aborted a transaction: TM_CAUSE_RESCHED Thread was rescheduled. TM_CAUSE_TLBI Software TLB invalid. TM_CAUSE_FAC_UNAV FP/VEC/VSX unavailable trap. - TM_CAUSE_SYSCALL Currently unused; future syscalls that must abort - transactions for consistency will use this. + TM_CAUSE_SYSCALL Syscall from active transaction. TM_CAUSE_SIGNAL Signal delivered. TM_CAUSE_MISC Currently unused. TM_CAUSE_ALIGNMENT Alignment fault. |