linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 0/24] make atomic_read() behave consistently across all architectures

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Date:	Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:15:26 +1000
From:	Nick Piggin <piggin@...erone.com.au>
To:	Satyam Sharma <satyam@...radead.org>
CC:	Stefan Richter <stefanr@...6.in-berlin.de>,
	paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com,
	Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>,
	Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>,
	Christoph Lameter <clameter@....com>,
	Chris Snook <csnook@...hat.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-arch@...r.kernel.org,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	netdev@...r.kernel.org, Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	ak@...e.de, heiko.carstens@...ibm.com, 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

Satyam Sharma wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 17 Aug 2007, Nick Piggin wrote:

>>>Sure, now
>>>that I learned of these properties I can start to audit code and insert
>>>barriers where I believe they are needed, but this simply means that
>>>almost all occurrences of atomic_read will get barriers (unless there
>>>already are implicit but more or less obvious barriers like msleep).
>>
>>You might find that these places that appear to need barriers are
>>buggy for other reasons anyway. Can you point to some in-tree code
>>we can have a look at?
> 
> 
> Such code was mentioned elsewhere (query nodemgr_host_thread in cscope)
> that managed to escape the requirement for a barrier only because of
> some completely un-obvious compilation-unit-scope thing. But I find such
> an non-explicit barrier quite bad taste. Stefan, do consider plunking an
> explicit call to barrier() there.

It is very obvious. msleep calls schedule() (ie. sleeps), which is
always a barrier.

The "unobvious" thing is that you wanted to know how the compiler knows
a function is a barrier -- answer is that if it does not *know* it is not
a barrier, it must assume it is a barrier. If the whole msleep call chain
including the scheduler were defined static in the current compilation
unit, then it would still be a barrier because it would actually be able
to see the barriers in schedule(void), if nothing else.
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