Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)

FreeBSD Manual Pages

  
 
  

home | help
MTX_POOL(9)	       FreeBSD Kernel Developer's Manual	   MTX_POOL(9)

NAME
     mtx_pool, mtx_pool_alloc, mtx_pool_find, mtx_pool_lock,
     mtx_pool_lock_spin, mtx_pool_unlock, mtx_pool_unlock_spin,
     mtx_pool_create, mtx_pool_destroy -- mutex	pool routines

SYNOPSIS
     #include <sys/param.h>
     #include <sys/lock.h>
     #include <sys/mutex.h>

     struct mtx	*
     mtx_pool_alloc(struct mtx_pool *pool);

     struct mtx	*
     mtx_pool_find(struct mtx_pool *pool, void *ptr);

     void
     mtx_pool_lock(struct mtx_pool *pool, void *ptr);

     void
     mtx_pool_lock_spin(struct mtx_pool	*pool, void *ptr);

     void
     mtx_pool_unlock(struct mtx_pool *pool, void *ptr);

     void
     mtx_pool_unlock_spin(struct mtx_pool *pool, void *ptr);

     struct mtx_pool *
     mtx_pool_create(const char	*mtx_name, int pool_size, int opts);

     void
     mtx_pool_destroy(struct mtx_pool **poolp);

DESCRIPTION
     Mutex pools are designed to be used as short term leaf mutexes; i.e., the
     last mutex	one might acquire before calling mtx_sleep(9).	They operate
     using a shared pool of mutexes.  A	mutex may be chosen from the pool
     based on a	supplied pointer, which	may or may not point to	anything
     valid, or the caller may allocate an arbitrary shared mutex from the pool
     and save the returned mutex pointer for later use.

     The shared	mutexes	in the mtxpool_sleep mutex pool, which is created by
     default, are standard, non-recursive, blockable mutexes, and should only
     be	used in	appropriate situations.	 The mutexes in	the
     mtxpool_lockbuilder mutex pool are	similar, except	that they are initial-
     ized with the MTX_NOWITNESS flag so that they may be used to build
     higher-level locks.  Other	mutex pools may	be created that	contain	mu-
     texes with	different properties, such as spin mutexes.

     The caller	can lock and unlock mutexes returned by	the pool routines, but
     since the mutexes are shared, the caller should not attempt to destroy
     them or modify their characteristics.  While pool mutexes are normally
     leaf mutexes (meaning that	one cannot depend on any ordering guarantees
     after obtaining one), one can still obtain	other mutexes under carefully
     controlled	circumstances.	Specifically, if one has a private mutex (one
     that was allocated	and initialized	by the caller),	one can	obtain it af-
     ter obtaining a pool mutex	if ordering issues are carefully accounted
     for.  In these cases the private mutex winds up being the true leaf mu-
     tex.

     Pool mutexes have the following advantages:

	   1.	No structural overhead;	i.e., they can be associated with a
		structure without adding bloat to it.
	   2.	Mutexes	can be obtained	for invalid pointers, which is useful
		when one uses mutexes to interlock destructor operations.
	   3.	No initialization or destruction overhead.
	   4.	Can be used with mtx_sleep(9).

     And the following disadvantages:

	   1.	Should generally only be used as leaf mutexes.
	   2.	Pool/pool dependency ordering cannot be	guaranteed.
	   3.	Possible L1 cache mastership contention	between	CPUs.

     mtx_pool_alloc() obtains a	shared mutex from the specified	pool.  This
     routine uses a simple rover to choose one of the shared mutexes managed
     by	the mtx_pool subsystem.

     mtx_pool_find() returns the shared	mutex associated with the specified
     address.  This routine will create	a hash out of the pointer passed into
     it	and will choose	a shared mutex from the	specified pool based on	that
     hash.  The	pointer	does not need to point to anything real.

     mtx_pool_lock(), mtx_pool_lock_spin(), mtx_pool_unlock(), and
     mtx_pool_unlock_spin() lock and unlock the	shared mutex from the speci-
     fied pool associated with the specified address; they are a combination
     of	mtx_pool_find()	and mtx_lock(9), mtx_lock_spin(9), mtx_unlock(9), and
     mtx_unlock_spin(9), respectively.	Since these routines must first	find
     the mutex to operate on, they are not as fast as directly using the mutex
     pointer returned by a previous invocation of mtx_pool_find() or
     mtx_pool_alloc().

     mtx_pool_create() allocates and initializes a new mutex pool of the spec-
     ified size.  The pool size	must be	a power	of two.	 The opts argument is
     passed to mtx_init(9) to set the options for each mutex in	the pool.

     mtx_pool_destroy()	calls mtx_destroy(9) on	each mutex in the specified
     pool, deallocates the memory associated with the pool, and	assigns	NULL
     to	the pool pointer.

SEE ALSO
     locking(9), mutex(9)

HISTORY
     These routines first appeared in FreeBSD 5.0.

FreeBSD	13.0		       February	6, 2010			  FreeBSD 13.0

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | SEE ALSO | HISTORY

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=mtx_pool&sektion=9&manpath=FreeBSD+12.0-RELEASE>

home | help