xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/mtx_pool.9 (revision 09e8dea79366f1e5b3a73e8a271b26e4b6bf2e6a)
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30.Dd March 25, 2002
31.Dt MTX_POOL 9
32.Os
33.Sh NAME
34.Nm mtx_pool ,
35.Nm mtx_pool_alloc ,
36.Nm mtx_pool_find ,
37.Nm mtx_pool_lock ,
38.Nm mtx_pool_unlock
39.Nd "mutex pool routines"
40.Sh SYNOPSIS
41.In sys/param.h
42.In sys/lock.h
43.In sys/mutex.h
44.Ft "struct mtx *"
45.Fn mtx_pool_alloc "void"
46.Ft "struct mtx *"
47.Fn mtx_pool_find "void *ptr"
48.Ft void
49.Fn mtx_pool_lock "void *ptr"
50.Ft void
51.Fn mtx_pool_unlock "void *ptr"
52.Sh DESCRIPTION
53Mutex pools are designed to be used as short term leaf mutexes;
54i.e., the last mutex one might acquire before calling
55.Xr msleep 9 .
56They operate using a shared pool of mutexes.
57A mutex is chosen from the pool based on the supplied pointer,
58which may or may not point to anything valid.
59.Pp
60The shared mutexes managed by the pool module are standard, non-recursive,
61blockable mutexes, and should only be used in appropriate situations.
62.Pp
63The caller can lock and unlock mutexes returned by the pool routines, but
64since the mutexes are shared, the caller should not attempt to destroy them
65or modify their characteristics.
66While pool mutexes are normally leaf mutexes
67(meaning that one cannot depend on any ordering guarantees
68after obtaining one),
69one can still obtain other mutexes under carefully controlled circumstances.
70Specifically, if one has a private mutex
71(one that was allocated and initialized by the caller),
72one can obtain it after obtaining a pool mutex if ordering issues are
73carefully accounted for.
74In these cases the private mutex winds up being the true leaf mutex.
75.Pp
76Pool mutexes have the following advantages:
77.Pp
78.Bl -enum -offset indent -compact
79.It
80No structural overhead;
81i.e., they can be associated with a structure without adding bloat to it.
82.It
83Mutexes can be obtained for invalid pointers, which is useful when one uses
84mutexes to interlock destructor operations.
85.It
86No initialization or destruction overhead.
87.It
88Can be used with
89.Xr msleep 9 .
90.El
91.Pp
92And the following disadvantages:
93.Pp
94.Bl -enum -offset indent -compact
95.It
96Should generally only be used as leaf mutexes.
97.It
98Pool/pool dependency ordering cannot be guaranteed.
99.It
100Possible L1 cache mastership contention between CPUs.
101.El
102.Pp
103.Fn mtx_pool_alloc
104obtains a shared mutex from the pool.
105This routine uses a simple rover to choose one of the shared mutexes managed
106by the
107.Nm
108subsystem.
109.Pp
110.Fn mtx_pool_find
111returns the shared mutex associated with the specified address.
112This routine will create a hash out of the pointer passed into it
113and will choose a shared mutex based on that hash.
114The pointer does not need to point to anything real.
115.Pp
116.Fn mtx_pool_lock
117and
118.Fn mtx_pool_unlock
119lock and unlock the shared mutex associated with the specified address,
120respectively;
121they are a combination of
122.Fn mtx_pool_find
123and
124.Xr mtx_lock 9
125and
126.Xr mtx_unlock 9 ,
127respectively.
128Since these routines must first find the mutex to operate on,
129they are not as fast as directly using the pointer (mutex) returned by
130a previous invocation of
131.Fn mtx_pool_find .
132.Pp
133.Sh SEE ALSO
134.Xr msleep 9 ,
135.Xr mutex 9
136.Sh HISTORY
137These routines first appeared in
138.Fx 5.0 .
139