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authorDaniel Jordan <daniel.m.jordan@oracle.com>2020-06-03 15:59:59 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2020-06-03 20:09:45 -0700
commitec3b39c731897aa03873094cd277d009341cd7c4 (patch)
tree85e9c24f64b4d6e8ef31dc9922bae6c7bb3103cc /Documentation/core-api
parentecd096506922332fdb36ff1211e03601befe6e18 (diff)
padata: document multithreaded jobs
Add Documentation for multithreaded jobs. Signed-off-by: Daniel Jordan <daniel.m.jordan@oracle.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Tested-by: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org> Cc: Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@linux.intel.com> Cc: Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com> Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com> Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com> Cc: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au> Cc: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ziepe.ca> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> Cc: Kirill Tkhai <ktkhai@virtuozzo.com> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org> Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz> Cc: Pavel Tatashin <pasha.tatashin@soleen.com> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org> Cc: Robert Elliott <elliott@hpe.com> Cc: Shile Zhang <shile.zhang@linux.alibaba.com> Cc: Steffen Klassert <steffen.klassert@secunet.com> Cc: Steven Sistare <steven.sistare@oracle.com> Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> Cc: Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com> Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200527173608.2885243-9-daniel.m.jordan@oracle.com Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/core-api')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/core-api/padata.rst41
1 files changed, 31 insertions, 10 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/core-api/padata.rst b/Documentation/core-api/padata.rst
index 9a24c111781d..0830e5b0e821 100644
--- a/Documentation/core-api/padata.rst
+++ b/Documentation/core-api/padata.rst
@@ -4,23 +4,26 @@
The padata parallel execution mechanism
=======================================
-:Date: December 2019
+:Date: May 2020
Padata is a mechanism by which the kernel can farm jobs out to be done in
-parallel on multiple CPUs while retaining their ordering. It was developed for
-use with the IPsec code, which needs to be able to perform encryption and
-decryption on large numbers of packets without reordering those packets. The
-crypto developers made a point of writing padata in a sufficiently general
-fashion that it could be put to other uses as well.
+parallel on multiple CPUs while optionally retaining their ordering.
-Usage
-=====
+It was originally developed for IPsec, which needs to perform encryption and
+decryption on large numbers of packets without reordering those packets. This
+is currently the sole consumer of padata's serialized job support.
+
+Padata also supports multithreaded jobs, splitting up the job evenly while load
+balancing and coordinating between threads.
+
+Running Serialized Jobs
+=======================
Initializing
------------
-The first step in using padata is to set up a padata_instance structure for
-overall control of how jobs are to be run::
+The first step in using padata to run serialized jobs is to set up a
+padata_instance structure for overall control of how jobs are to be run::
#include <linux/padata.h>
@@ -162,6 +165,24 @@ functions that correspond to the allocation in reverse::
It is the user's responsibility to ensure all outstanding jobs are complete
before any of the above are called.
+Running Multithreaded Jobs
+==========================
+
+A multithreaded job has a main thread and zero or more helper threads, with the
+main thread participating in the job and then waiting until all helpers have
+finished. padata splits the job into units called chunks, where a chunk is a
+piece of the job that one thread completes in one call to the thread function.
+
+A user has to do three things to run a multithreaded job. First, describe the
+job by defining a padata_mt_job structure, which is explained in the Interface
+section. This includes a pointer to the thread function, which padata will
+call each time it assigns a job chunk to a thread. Then, define the thread
+function, which accepts three arguments, ``start``, ``end``, and ``arg``, where
+the first two delimit the range that the thread operates on and the last is a
+pointer to the job's shared state, if any. Prepare the shared state, which is
+typically allocated on the main thread's stack. Last, call
+padata_do_multithreaded(), which will return once the job is finished.
+
Interface
=========