linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] atomic: improve atomic_inc_unless_negative/atomic_dec_unless

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Message-ID: <20130312175557.GF3725@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Date:	Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:55:57 -0700
From:	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:	Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@...il.com>
Cc:	Ming Lei <tom.leiming@...il.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Shaohua Li <shli@...nel.org>,
	Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] atomic: improve
 atomic_inc_unless_negative/atomic_dec_unless_positive

On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 04:02:47PM +0100, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> 2013/3/12 Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>:
> > On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 12:03:23PM +0800, Ming Lei wrote:
> >> On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 11:39 AM, Paul E. McKenney
> >> <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Atomic operations that return a value are required to act as full memory
> >> > barriers.  This means that code relying on ordering provided by these
> >> > atomic operations must also do ordering, either by using an explicit
> >> > memory barrier or by relying on guarantees from atomic operations.
> >> >
> >> > For example:
> >> >
> >> >         CPU 0                                   CPU 1
> >> >
> >> >         X = 1;                                  r1 = Z;
> >> >         if (atomic_inc_unless_negative(&Y)      smp_mb();
> >> >                 do_something();
> >> >         Z = 1;                                  r2 = X;
> >> >
> >> > Assuming X and Z are initially zero, if r1==1, we are guaranteed
> >> > that r2==1.  However, CPU 1 needs its smp_mb() in order to pair with
> >> > the barrier implicit in atomic_inc_unless_negative().
> >> >
> >> > Make sense?
> >>
> >> Yes, it does, and thanks for the explanation.
> >>
> >> But looks the above example is not what Frederic described:
> >>
> >> "the above atomic_read() might return -1 because there is no
> >> guarantee it's seeing the recent update on the remote CPU."
> >>
> >> Even I am not sure if adding one smp_mb() around atomic_read()
> >> can guarantee that too.
> >
> > Frederic was likely thinking of some other scenario that would be
> > broken by atomic_inc_unless_negative() failing to act as a full
> > memory barrier.  Here is another example:
> >
> >
> >         CPU 0                                   CPU 1
> >
> >                                                 X = 1;
> >         if (atomic_inc_unless_negative(&Y)      r1 = atomic_xchg(&Y, -1);
> >                 r2 = X;
> >
> > If atomic_inc_unless_negative() acts as a full memory barrier, then
> > if CPU 0 reaches the assignment from X, the results will be guaranteed
> > to be 1.  Otherwise, there is no guarantee.
> 
> Your scenarios show an interesting guarantee I did not think about.
> But my concern was on such a situation:
> 
>   CPU 0                            CPU 1
> 
>   atomic_set(&X, -1)
>                                        atomic_inc(&X)
>   atomic_add_unless_negative(&X, 5)
> 
> On the above situation, CPU 0 may still see X == -1 and thus not add
> the 5. Of course all that only make sense with datas coming along.

That could happen, but you would need CPU 1 to carry out some other
reference for it to be a bug.  Otherwise, CPU 1's atomic_inc() just
happened after all of CPU 0's code.  But yes, it would be possible
to misorder with some larger scenario starting with this example.
Especially given that atomic_inc() does not make any ordering guarantees.

							Thanx, Paul

							Thanx, Paul

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