xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/mtx_pool.9 (revision ee2ea5ceafed78a5bd9810beb9e3ca927180c226)
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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.Fn msleep .
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 mutex 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.Bl -enum -offset indent -compact
78.It
79No structural overhead;
80i.e., they can be associated with a structure without adding bloat to it.
81.It
82Mutexes can be obtained for invalid pointers, which is useful when one uses
83mutexes to interlock destructor operations.
84.It
85No initialization or destruction overhead.
86.It
87Can be used with
88.Fn msleep .
89.El
90.Pp
91And the following disadvantages:
92.Bl -enum -offset indent -compact
93.It
94Should generally only be used as leaf mutexes.
95.It
96Pool/pool dependency ordering cannot be guaranteed.
97.It
98Possible L1 cache mastership contention between CPUs.
99.El
100.Pp
101.Fn mtx_pool_alloc
102obtains a shared mutex from the pool.
103This routine uses a simple rover to choose one of the shared mutexes managed
104by the
105.Nm
106subsystem.
107.Pp
108.Fn mtx_pool_find
109returns the shared mutex associated with the specified address.
110This routine will create a hash out of the pointer passed into it
111and will choose a shared mutex based on that hash.
112The pointer does not need to point to anything real.
113.Pp
114.Fn mtx_pool_lock
115and
116.Fn mtx_pool_unlock
117lock and unlock the shared mutex associated with the specified address,
118respectively;
119they are a combination of
120.Fn mtx_pool_find
121and
122.Fn mtx_lock
123and
124.Fn mtx_unlock ,
125respectively.
126Since these routines must first find the mutex to operate on,
127they are not as fast as directly using the pointer (mutex) returned by
128a previous invocation of
129.Fn mtx_pool_find .
130.Pp
131.Sh SEE ALSO
132.Xr mutex 9 ,
133.Xr msleep 9
134.Sh HISTORY
135These routines first appeared in
136.Fx 5.0 .
137