RFR: 2178143: VM crashes if the number of bound CPUs changed during runtime

[David Holmes]

Hi Yumin,

I have a few suggested changes.

First in os.hpp I suggest

  return _processor_count > 1 || AssumeMP ;

That way we don't bypass the assertion and don't encounter unnecessary 
overhead on the common path.

In arguments.cpp:

+   if (AssumeMP && FLAG_IS_DEFAULT(ParallelGCThreads)) {
+     warning("With AssumeMP, recommend run with 
-XX:ParallelGCThreads=<num_of_gc_threads>, where"
+             "  num_of_gc_threads can be set to number of cores");
+   }

I'm not convinced issuing a warning is necessary or desirable here. With 
a uniprocessor startup will we even default to using parallel GC? The 
above should only be issued if using parallel GC - so better to move it 
into set_parallel_gc_flags().

In any case it isn't clear what the user should supply here. If they use 
the maximum expected number of cores initially then while they only have 
1 core their VM may not even function adequately due to GC overhead. I 
think all you can say here is something like:

warning("If the number of processors is expected to increase from one, 
then you should configure the number of parallel GC threads 
appropriately using -XX:ParallelGCThreads=N");


In globals.hpp:

+   product(bool, AssumeMP, false, 
       \
+           "Assume run on multiple processors always") 
       \

Was there any discussion on making this default to true instead?

Suggested re-wording:

  "Instruct the VM to assume multiple processors are available"

Thanks,
David

On 26/03/2013 9:15 AM, Yumin Qi wrote:
> It should be "AssumeMP".
>
> /Yumin
>
> On 3/25/2013 3:32 PM, Yumin Qi wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>   New webrev to use "-XX:+AssumMP" flag. Also add warning to recommend
>> use this flag with "-XX:ParallelGCThreads" to remind user to avoid
>> running with only one GC thread. This is verified by Oleksandr with
>> the test case running on Linux which is not Zone configured.
>>
>>   Same link.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Yumin
>>
>> On 3/20/2013 2:27 PM, Yumin Qi wrote:
>>>
>>> 2178143:  VM crashes if the number of bound CPUs changed during runtime.
>>>
>>> Situation: Customer first configure only one CPU online and turn
>>> others offline to run java application, after java program started,
>>> bring more CPUs back online. Since VM started on a single CPU,
>>> os::is_MP() will return false, but after more CPUs available, OS will
>>> schedule the app run on multiple CPUs, this caused SEGV in various
>>> places where data consistency was broken. The solution is supply a
>>> flag to assume it is running on MP, so lock is forced to be called.
>>>
>>> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~minqi/2178143/
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Yumin
>>
>