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-rw-r--r--Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.htmlx28
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diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.htmlx b/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.htmlx
index 3355f1f9384c..d6a84f3e0451 100644
--- a/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.htmlx
+++ b/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.htmlx
@@ -1257,12 +1257,27 @@ These classes is covered in the following sections.
<h3><a name="Specialization">Specialization</a></h3>
<p>
-RCU is and always has been intended primarily for read-mostly situations, as
-illustrated by the following figure.
-This means that RCU's read-side primitives are optimized, often at the
+RCU is and always has been intended primarily for read-mostly situations,
+which means that RCU's read-side primitives are optimized, often at the
expense of its update-side primitives.
+Experience thus far is captured by the following list of situations:
-<p><img src="RCUApplicability.svg" alt="RCUApplicability.svg" width="70%"></p>
+<ol>
+<li> Read-mostly data, where stale and inconsistent data is not
+ a problem: RCU works great!
+<li> Read-mostly data, where data must be consistent:
+ RCU works well.
+<li> Read-write data, where data must be consistent:
+ RCU <i>might</i> work OK.
+ Or not.
+<li> Write-mostly data, where data must be consistent:
+ RCU is very unlikely to be the right tool for the job,
+ with the following exceptions, where RCU can provide:
+ <ol type=a>
+ <li> Existence guarantees for update-friendly mechanisms.
+ <li> Wait-free read-side primitives for real-time use.
+ </ol>
+</ol>
<p>
This focus on read-mostly situations means that RCU must interoperate
@@ -1330,10 +1345,7 @@ some period of time, so the exact wait period is a judgment call.
One of our pair of veternarians might wait 30 seconds before pronouncing
the cat dead, while the other might insist on waiting a full minute.
The two veternarians would then disagree on the state of the cat during
-the final 30 seconds of the minute following the last heartbeat, as
-fancifully illustrated below:
-
-<p><img src="2013-08-is-it-dead.png" alt="2013-08-is-it-dead.png" width="431"></p>
+the final 30 seconds of the minute following the last heartbeat.
<p>
Interestingly enough, this same situation applies to hardware.