NetBSD/share/man/man9/xcall.9

.\"     $NetBSD: xcall.9,v 1.7 2010/12/02 12:54:13 wiz Exp $
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.\" by Andrew Doran.
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.Dd May 16, 2010
.Dt XCALL 9
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm xcall ,
.Nm xc_broadcast ,
.Nm xc_unicast ,
.Nm xc_wait
.Nd cross-call interface
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In sys/xcall.h
.Vt typedef void (*xcfunc_t)(void *, void *);
.Ft uint64_t
.Fn xc_broadcast "u_int flags" "xcfunc_t func" "void *arg1" "void *arg2"
.Ft uint64_t
.Fn xc_unicast "u_int flags" "xcfunc_t func" "void *arg1" "void *arg2" "struct cpu_info *ci"
.Ft void
.Fn xc_wait "uint64_t where"
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The machine-independent
.Nm
interface allows any CPU in the system to request that an arbitrary
function be executed on any other CPU.
.Pp
Sometimes it is necessary to modify hardware state that is tied
directly to individual CPUs
.Po
such as a CPU's local timer
.Pc ,
and these updates can not be done remotely by another CPU.
The LWP requesting the update may be unable to guarantee that it
will be running on the CPU where the update must occur, when the
update occurs.
.Pp
Additionally, it is sometimes necessary to modify per-CPU software
state from a remote CPU.
Where these update operations are so rare or the access to the
per-CPU data so frequent that the cost of using locking or atomic
operations to provide coherency is prohibitive, another way must
be found.
.Pp
Cross calls help to solve these types of problem.
However, since this facility is heavyweight, it is expected that
it will not be used often.
.Pp
.Nm
provides a mechanism for making
.Dq "low priority"
cross calls.
The function to be executed runs on the remote CPU within a thread
context, and not from a software interrupt, so it can ensure that it is
not interrupting other code running on the CPU, and so has exclusive
access to the CPU.
Keep in mind that unless disabled, it may cause a kernel preemption.
.Sh NOTES
Functions being called should be relatively lightweight.
They may block on locks, but carefully and minimally, to not interfere
with other cross calls in the system.
.Sh FUNCTIONS
.Bl -tag -width compact
.It Fn xc_broadcast "flags" "func" "arg1" "arg2"
Call
.Fo "(*func)"
.Fa "arg1"
.Fa "arg2"
.Fc
on all CPUs in the system.
Return a
.Vt uint64_t
.Dq ticket
to
.Fn xc_wait
on for the cross-call to complete.
.Fa flags
should be 0.
.Fn xc_broadcast
should not be called from interrupt context.
.It Fn xc_unicast "flags" "func" "arg1" "arg2" "ci"
Like
.Fn xc_broadcast ,
but call
.Fn "(*func)"
on only the CPU indicated by
.Fa ci .
.Fn xc_unicast
also returns a
.Dq ticket .
.It Fn xc_wait "where"
Wait on the
.Dq ticket
returned by a prior
.Fn xc_broadcast
or
.Fn xc_unicast
for the corresponding cross-call to complete.
.El
.Sh CODE REFERENCES
The
.Nm
interface is implemented within the file
.Pa sys/kern/subr_xcall.c .
.\" .Sh EXAMPLES
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr kpreempt 9 ,
.Xr percpu 9
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
interface first appeared in
.Nx 5.0 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Andrew Doran Aq ad@NetBSD.org