10.3.2.8 RCU Usage Summary

At its core, RCU is nothing more nor less than an API that provides:

  1. a publish-subscribe mechanism for adding new data,
  2. a way of waiting for pre-existing RCU readers to finish, and
  3. a discipline of maintaining multiple versions to permit change without harming or unduly delaying concurrent RCU readers.

That said, it is possible to build higher-level constructs on top of RCU, including the reader-writer-locking, reference-counting, and existence-guarantee constructs listed in the earlier sections. Furthermore, I have no doubt that the Linux community will continue to find interesting new uses for RCU, as well as for any of a number of other synchronization primitives.



Paul E. McKenney 2011-12-16