linux-kernel - Re: I/O memory barriers vs SMP memory barriers

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Date:	Sun, 25 Mar 2007 20:24:18 -0700
From:	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:	Lennert Buytenhek <buytenh@...tstofly.org>
Cc:	David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>,
	Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
	ARM Linux Mailing List 
	<linux-arm-kernel@...ts.arm.linux.org.uk>,
	Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, torvalds@...l.org
Subject: Re: I/O memory barriers vs SMP memory barriers

On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 11:38:43PM +0200, Lennert Buytenhek wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 02:15:42PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> 
> > > > [ background: On ARM, SMP synchronisation does need barriers but device
> > > >   synchronisation does not.  The question is that given this, whether
> > > >   mb() and friends can be NOPs on ARM or not (i.e. whether mb() is
> > > >   supposed to sync against other CPUs or not, or whether only smp_mb()
> > > >   can be used for this.)  ]
> > > 
> > > Hmmmm...
> > > 
> > > [snip]
> > 
> > 3.	Orders memory accesses and device accesses, but not necessarily
> > 	the union of the two -- mb(), rmb(), wmb().
> 
> If mb/rmb/wmb are required to order normal memory accesses, that means
> that the change made in commit 9623b3732d11b0a18d9af3419f680d27ea24b014
> to always define mb/rmb/wmb as barrier() on ARM systems was wrong.

This was on UP ARM systems, right?  Assuming that ARM CPUs respect the
usual CPU-self-consistency semantics, and given the background that
device accesses are ordered, then it might well be OK to have mb/rmb/wmb
be barrier() on UP ARM systems.

Most likely not on SMP ARM systems, however.

> Does everybody agree on these semantics, though?  At least David seems
> to think that mb/rmb/wmb aren't required to order normal memory accesses
> against each other..

Not on UP.  On SMP, ordering is (almost certainly) required.

> > 4.	Orders only device accesses, which is what seems to be looked
> > 	for here.
> 
> Yes.  (As above, on ARM, SMP synchronisation does need barriers but
> device synchronisation does not.  If mb/rmb/wmb were only required to
> synchronise device accesses, they could have been regular compiler
> barriers on ARM, but if they are also required to synchronise normal
> memory accesses against each other, they have to map to hardware
> barriers.)

Again, for kernels built for UP, you might well be able to make the
mb() primitives be barrier().  I don't see it for SMP, though.

						Thanx, Paul
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