linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 0/2] jump label: 2.6.38 updates

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Message-ID: <57049.94.211.195.167.1297729198.squirrel@gate.crashing.org>
Date:	Tue, 15 Feb 2011 01:19:58 +0100 (CET)
From:	"Segher Boessenkool" <segher@...nel.crashing.org>
To:	"Mathieu Desnoyers" <mathieu.desnoyers@...ymtl.ca>
Cc:	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	"Matt Fleming" <matt@...sole-pimps.org>,
	"David Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>, rostedt@...dmis.org,
	peterz@...radead.org, will.newton@...il.com, jbaron@...hat.com,
	hpa@...or.com, mingo@...e.hu, tglx@...utronix.de,
	andi@...stfloor.org, roland@...hat.com, rth@...hat.com,
	masami.hiramatsu.pt@...achi.com, fweisbec@...il.com,
	avi@...hat.com, sam@...nborg.org, ddaney@...iumnetworks.com,
	michael@...erman.id.au, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	vapier@...too.org, cmetcalf@...era.com, dhowells@...hat.com,
	schwidefsky@...ibm.com, heiko.carstens@...ibm.com,
	benh@...nel.crashing.org,
	"Segher Boessenkool" <segher@...nel.crashing.org>,
	"Paul Mackerras" <paulus@...ba.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/2] jump label: 2.6.38 updates

>> What CPU family are we talking about here?  For cache coherent CPUs,
>> cache coherence really is supposed to work, even for mixed atomic and
>> non-atomic instructions to the same variable.
>
> I'm really curious to know which CPU families too. I've used git blame
> to see where these lwz/stw instructions were added to powerpc, and it
> points to:
>
> commit 9f0cbea0d8cc47801b853d3c61d0e17475b0cc89

> So let's ping the relevant people to see if there was any reason for
> making these atomic read/set operations different from other
> architectures in the first place.

lwz is a simple 32-bit load.  On PowerPC, such a load is guaranteed
to be atomic (except some unaligned cases).  stw is similar, for stores.
These are the normal insns, not ll/sc or anything.

At the time, volatile tricks were used to make the accesses atomic; this
patch changed that.  Result is (or should be!) better code generation.

Is there a problem with it?


Segher

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