From owner-freebsd-threads@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Mar 29 13:26:12 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-threads@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C69BF16A4CE for ; Mon, 29 Mar 2004 13:26:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.pcnet.com (mail.pcnet.com [204.213.232.4]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5905A43D41 for ; Mon, 29 Mar 2004 13:26:10 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from eischen@vigrid.com) Received: from mail.pcnet.com (mail.pcnet.com [204.213.232.4]) by mail.pcnet.com (8.12.10/8.12.1) with ESMTP id i2TLQ7tf016191; Mon, 29 Mar 2004 16:26:07 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 16:26:07 -0500 (EST) From: Daniel Eischen X-Sender: eischen@pcnet5.pcnet.com To: Doug Rabson In-Reply-To: <200403292221.00286.dfr@nlsystems.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-threads@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Thread Local Storage X-BeenThere: freebsd-threads@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Threading on FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 21:26:12 -0000 On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Doug Rabson wrote: > On Monday 29 March 2004 20:36, Daniel Eischen wrote: > > On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Doug Rabson wrote: > > > I've been spending a bit of time recently familiarising myself with > > > this TLS stuff and trying out a few things. I've been playing with > > > rtld and I have a prototype patch which implements enough TLS > > > support to let a non-threaded program which uses static TLS work. > > > With a tiny bit more work I can have limited support for dynamic > > > TLS as well (not for dlopen'ed modules yet though). Is there a p4 > > > tree for this stuff yet? I'd like to check in what I have sometime. > > > > > > I've also been looking at libpthread and I can see some potential > > > problems with it. Currently libpthread on i386 uses %gs to point at > > > a struct kcb which seems to be a per-kse structure. This structure > > > contains a pointer to a per-thread struct tcb and this pointer is > > > managed by the userland context switch code. Other arches are > > > similar, e.g. ia64 uses $tp to point at struct kcb. > > > > > > The problem with TLS is that the i386 ABI needs %gs to point at the > > > TLS > > > > There are 2 different methods allowed for the i386 ABI. > > We want to use the other method in which there is an > > additional indirection. The current i386 libpthread > > stuff adheres to this method. > > Surely the GNU TLS ABI is preferable? It generates much smaller code and > needs many fewer relocations. No, we don't want an LDT for every thread and don't want to force a syscall for a thread switch. -- Dan Eischen