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

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Date:	Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:08:26 +0200
From:	Stefan Richter <stefanr@...6.in-berlin.de>
To:	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>
CC:	Satyam Sharma <satyam@...radead.org>,
	Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>,
	Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Christoph Lameter <clameter@....com>,
	Chris Snook <csnook@...hat.com>,
	Ilpo Jarvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@...sinki.fi>,
	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-arch@...r.kernel.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

Nick Piggin wrote:
> Satyam Sharma wrote:
>> And we have driver / subsystem maintainers such as Stefan
>> coming up and admitting that often a lot of code that's written to use
>> atomic_read() does assume the read will not be elided by the compiler.
> 
> So these are broken on i386 and x86-64?

The ieee1394 and firewire subsystems have open, undiagnosed bugs, also
on i386 and x86-64.  But whether there is any bug because of wrong
assumptions about atomic_read among them, I don't know.  I don't know
which assumptions the authors made, I only know that I wasn't aware of
all the properties of atomic_read until now.

> Are they definitely safe on SMP and weakly ordered machines with
> just a simple compiler barrier there? Because I would not be
> surprised if there are a lot of developers who don't really know
> what to assume when it comes to memory ordering issues.
> 
> This is not a dig at driver writers: we still have memory ordering
> problems in the VM too (and probably most of the subtle bugs in
> lockless VM code are memory ordering ones). Let's not make up a
> false sense of security and hope that sprinkling volatile around
> will allow people to write bug-free lockless code. If a writer
> can't be bothered reading API documentation

...or, if there is none, the implementation specification (as in case of
the atomic ops), or, if there is none, the implementation (as in case of
a some infrastructure code here and there)...

> and learning the Linux memory model, they can still be productive
> writing safely locked code.

Provided they are aware that they might not have the full picture of the
lockless primitives.  :-)
-- 
Stefan Richter
-=====-=-=== =--- =---=
http://arcgraph.de/sr/
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