linux-kernel - Re: [RFC][PATCH 1/3] locking: Introduce smp_acquire__after_ctrl

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Date:	Tue, 7 Jun 2016 11:44:09 -0700
From:	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Cc:	Hannes Frederic Sowa <hannes@...essinduktion.org>,
	Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>,
	Vineet Gupta <Vineet.Gupta1@...opsys.com>,
	Waiman Long <waiman.long@....com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, torvalds@...ux-foundation.org,
	manfred@...orfullife.com, dave@...olabs.net, boqun.feng@...il.com,
	tj@...nel.org, pablo@...filter.org, kaber@...sh.net,
	davem@...emloft.net, oleg@...hat.com,
	netfilter-devel@...r.kernel.org, sasha.levin@...cle.com,
	hofrat@...dl.org
Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH 1/3] locking: Introduce smp_acquire__after_ctrl_dep

On Tue, Jun 07, 2016 at 07:48:53PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 07, 2016 at 08:23:15AM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > and if the hardware is not excessively clever (bad bet, by the
> > way, long term),
> 
> This ^
> 
> > > Is there something else than conditional move instructions that could
> > > come to play here? Obviously a much smarter CPU could evaluate all the
> > > jumps and come to the conclusion that the write to c is never depending
> > > on the load from a, but is this implemented somewhere in hardware?
> > 
> > I don't know of any hardware that does that, but given that conditional
> > moves are supported by some weakly ordered hardware, it looks to me
> > that we are stuck with the possibility of "a"-"c" reordering.
> 
> Is why I'm scared of relying on the non-condition.
> 
> The if and else branches are obviously dependent on the completion of
> the load; anything after that, not so much.
> 
> You could construct an argument against this program order speculation
> based on interrupts, which should not observe the stores out of order
> etc.. but if the hardware is that clever, it can also abort the entire
> speculation on interrupt (much like hardware transactions already can).
> 
> So even if today no hardware is this clever (and that isn't proven)
> there's nothing saying it will not ever be.
> 
> This is why I really do not want to advertise and or rely on this
> behaviour.

What Peter said!  ;-)

							Thanx, Paul