What is a spinlock in Linux?

Question

I would like to know about spinlocks in detail?
Could someone explain that to me?

Answer 1

A spin lock is a way to protect a shared resource from being modified by two or more processes simultaneously. The first process that tries to modify the resource "acquires" the lock and continues on its way, doing what it needed to with the resource. Any other processes that subsequently try to acquire the lock get stopped; they are said to "spin in place" waiting on the lock to be released by the first process, thus the name spin lock.

The Linux kernel uses spin locks for many things, such as when sending data to a particular peripheral. Most hardware peripherals aren't designed to handle multiple simultaneous state updates. If two different modifications have to happen, one has to strictly follow the other, they can't overlap. A spin lock provides the necessary protection, ensuring that the modifications happen one at a time.

Spin locks are a problem because spinning blocks that thread's CPU core from doing any other work. While the Linux kernel does provide multitasking services to user space programs running under it, that general-purpose multitasking facility doesn't extend to kernel code.

This situation is changing, and has been for most of Linux's existence. Up through Linux 2.0, the kernel was almost purely a single-tasking program: whenever the CPU was running kernel code, only one CPU core was used, because there was a single spin lock protecting all shared resources, called the Big Kernel Lock (BKL). Beginning with Linux 2.2, the BKL is slowly being broken up into many independent locks that each protect a more focused class of resource. Today, with kernel 2.6, the BKL still exists, but it's only used by really old code that can't be readily moved to some more granular lock. It is now quite possible for a multicore box to have every CPU running useful kernel code.

There's a limit to the utility of breaking up the BKL because the Linux kernel lacks general multitasking. If a CPU core gets blocked spinning on a kernel spin lock, it can't be retasked, to go do something else until the lock is released. It just sits and spins until the lock is released.

Spin locks can effectively turn a monster 16-core box into a single-core box, if the workload is such that every core is always waiting for a single spin lock. This is the main limit to the scalability of the Linux kernel: doubling CPU cores from 2 to 4 probably will nearly double the speed of a Linux box, but doubling it from 16 to 32 probably won't, with most workloads.

Answer 2

A spin lock is when a process continually polls for a lock to be removed. It is considered bad because the process is consuming cycles (usually) needlessly. It is not Linux-specific, but a general programming pattern.

Example of a spinlock:

#!/bin/sh
#wait for some program to clear a lock before doing stuff
while [ -f /var/run/example.lock ]; do
  sleep 1
done
#do stuff

There is frequently a way to avoid a spin lock. For this particular example, there is a Linux tool called inotifywait (it's not usually installed by default). If it was written in C, you would simply use the inotify API that Linux provides.

The same example, using inotifywait shows how to accomplish the same thing without a spin lock:

#/bin/sh
inotifywait -e delete_self /var/run/example.lock
#do stuff

Answer 3

When a thread tries to acquire a lock, three things can happen if it fails, it can try and block, it can try and continue, it can try then go to sleep telling the OS to wakle it up when some event happens.

Now a try and continue uses a lot less time then a try and block. Let's say for the moment that a "try and continue" will take i unit of time and a "try and block " will take a hundred.

Now let us for the moment assume that on the average a thread will take 4 units of time holding the lock. It's wasteful to wait 100 units. So instead you write a loop of "try and continues". On the forth attempt you will usually acquire the lock. This is a spin lock. It's called that because the thread keeps spinning in place till it gets the lock.

An added safety measure is to limit the number of times the loop runs. So in the example you make a for loop run eg six times, if it fails then you "try and block".

If you know that a thread will always hold the lock for say 200 units, then you are wasting the computer time for each try and continue.

So in the end, a spin lock can be very efficient or wasteful. It is wasteful when the "typical" time to hold a lock is higher then the time it takes to "try and block". It is efficient when the typical time to hold a lock is much smaller then the time to 'try and block".

Ps: THe book to read on threads is "A Thread Primer", if you can still find it.

Answer 4

A lock is a way for two or more tasks (processes, threads) to synchronize. Specifically, when both tasks need intermittent access to a resource that can only be used by one task at a time, it's a way for the tasks to arrange not to be using the resource at the same time. In order to access the resource, a task must perform the following steps:

take the lock
use the resource
release the lock

Taking a lock is not possible if another task has already taken it. (Think of the lock as a physical token object. Either the object is in a drawer, or someone has it in their hand. Only the person holding the object may access the resource.) So “take the lock” really means “wait until no one else has the lock, then take it”.

From a high-level point of view, there are two major ways to implement locks: spinlocks, and conditions. With spinlocks, taking the lock means just “spinning” (i.e. doing nothing in a loop) until noone else has the lock. With conditions, if a task attempts to take the lock but is blocked because another task holds it, the newcomer enters a wait queue; the release operation signals to any waiting task that the lock is now available.

(These explanations are not enough to let you implement a lock, because I haven't said anything about atomicity. But atomicity is not important here.)

Spinlocks are obviously wasteful: the waiting task keeps checking whether the lock is taken. So why and when is it used? Spinlocks are often very cheap to obtain in the case where the lock isn't held. This makes it attractive when the chance for the lock to be held is small. Furthermore, spinlocks are only viable if obtaining the lock is not expected to take long. So spinlocks tend to be used in situations where they will remain held for a very short time, so that most attempts are expected to succeed on the first try, and those that need a wait don't wait long.

There is a good explanation of spinlocks and other concurrency mechanisms of the Linux kernel in Linux Device Drivers, chapter 5.