The Linux-kernel memory model (LKMM) is a powerful tool for developing highly concurrent Linux-kernel code, but it also has a steep learning curve. Wouldn’t it be great to get most of LKMM’s benefits without the learning curve?
This talk will describe how to do exactly that by using the standard Linux-kernel APIs (locking, reference counting, RCU) along with a simple rules of thumb, thus gaining most of LKMM’s power with less learning. And the full LKMM is always there when you need it!
Paul E. McKenney is a software engineer at Meta Platforms, and has been coding for almost half a century, with more than half of that on multicore hardware. Paul maintains the RCU implementation within the Linux kernel, where the variety of workloads present highly entertaining performance, scalability, real-time response, and energy-efficiency challenges. Paul also is a maintainer for the Linux-kernel memory model (LKMM), the kernel concurrency sanitizer (KCSAN), and the nolibc library.
