[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]
Message-ID: <46C4ABA5.9010804@redhat.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:55:17 -0400
From: Chris Snook <csnook@...hat.com>
To: Ilpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@...sinki.fi>
CC: Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>,
Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>,
Satyam Sharma <satyam@...radead.org>,
Christoph Lameter <clameter@....com>,
"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
Stefan Richter <stefanr@...6.in-berlin.de>,
Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
linux-arch@...r.kernel.org,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
Netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>, ak@...e.de,
heiko.carstens@...ibm.com, David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
schwidefsky@...ibm.com, wensong@...ux-vs.org, horms@...ge.net.au,
wjiang@...ilience.com, cfriesen@...tel.com, zlynx@....org,
rpjday@...dspring.com, jesper.juhl@...il.com,
segher@...nel.crashing.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/24] make atomic_read() behave consistently across all
architectures
Ilpo Järvinen wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Aug 2007, Herbert Xu wrote:
>
>> We've been through that already. If it's a busy-wait it
>> should use cpu_relax.
>
> I looked around a bit by using some command lines and ended up wondering
> if these are equal to busy-wait case (and should be fixed) or not:
>
> ./drivers/telephony/ixj.c
> 6674: while (atomic_read(&j->DSPWrite) > 0)
> 6675- atomic_dec(&j->DSPWrite);
>
> ...besides that, there are couple of more similar cases in the same file
> (with braces)...
atomic_dec() already has volatile behavior everywhere, so this is
semantically okay, but this code (and any like it) should be calling
cpu_relax() each iteration through the loop, unless there's a compelling
reason not to. I'll allow that for some hardware drivers (possibly this
one) such a compelling reason may exist, but hardware-independent core
subsystems probably have no excuse.
If the maintainer of this code doesn't see a compelling reason to add
cpu_relax() in this loop, then it should be patched.
-- Chris
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Powered by blists - more mailing lists