linux-kernel - Re: Current LKMM patch disposition

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Date:   Sat, 18 Feb 2023 21:58:41 -0500
From:   Joel Fernandes <joel@...lfernandes.org>
To:     Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@...il.com>
Cc:     Alan Stern <stern@...land.harvard.edu>,
        "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...nel.org>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-arch@...r.kernel.org,
        kernel-team@...a.com, mingo@...nel.org, will@...nel.org,
        peterz@...radead.org, boqun.feng@...il.com, npiggin@...il.com,
        dhowells@...hat.com, j.alglave@....ac.uk, luc.maranget@...ia.fr,
        akiyks@...il.com
Subject: Re: Current LKMM patch disposition

On Sat, Feb 18, 2023 at 9:05 PM Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@...il.com> wrote:
>
> > One additional feedback I wanted to mention, regarding this paragraph
> > under "WARNING":
> > ===========
> > The protections provided by READ_ONCE(), WRITE_ONCE(), and others are
> > not perfect; and under some circumstances it is possible for the
> > compiler to undermine the memory model. Here is an example. Suppose
> > both branches of an "if" statement store the same value to the same
> > location:
> > r1 = READ_ONCE(x);
> > if (r1) {
> > WRITE_ONCE(y, 2);
> > ... /* do something */
> > } else {
> > WRITE_ONCE(y, 2);
> > ... /* do something else */
> > }
> > ===========
> >
> > I tried lots of different compilers with varying degrees of
> > optimization, in all cases I find that the conditional instruction
> > always appears in program order before the stores inside the body of
> > the conditional. So I am not sure if this is really a valid concern on
> > current compilers, if not - could you provide an example of a compiler
> > and options that cause it?
>
> The compiler cannot change the order in which the load and the store
> appear in the program (these are "volatile accesses"); the concern is
> that (quoting from the .txt) it "could list the stores out of the
> conditional", thus effectively destroying the control dependency between
> the load and the store (the load-store "reordering" could then be
> performed by the uarch, under certain archs).  For example, compare:
>
> (for the C snippet)
>
> void func(int *x, int *y)
> {
>         int r1 = *(const volatile int *)x;
>
>         if (r1)
>                 *(volatile int *)y = 2;
>         else
>                 *(volatile int *)y = 2;
> }
>
> - arm64 gcc 11.3 -O1 gives:
>
> func:
>         ldr     w0, [x0]
>         cbz     w0, .L2
>         mov     w0, 2
>         str     w0, [x1]
> .L1:
>         ret
> .L2:
>         mov     w0, 2
>         str     w0, [x1]
>         b       .L1
>
> - OTOH, arm64 gcc 11.3 -O2 gives:
>
> func:
>         ldr     w0, [x0]
>         mov     w0, 2
>         str     w0, [x1]
>         ret
>
> - similarly, using arm64 clang 14.0.0 -O2,
>
> func:                                   // @func
>         mov     w8, #2
>         ldr     wzr, [x0]
>         str     w8, [x1]
>         ret
>
> I saw similar results using riscv, powerpc, x86 gcc & clang.

*Sigh*, yeah and even if the conditional logic is not fully stripped
out as in your example, I still see arm64 perform stores in
program-order before ever checking the branch condition:

int prog(void)
{
  int r1 = *(const volatile int *)x;
  if (r1) {
    *(volatile int *)y = 1;
  } else {
    *(volatile int *)y = 1;
    *(volatile int *)z = 2;
  }
}

becomes with armv8 clang and -Os:

prog:
  adrp x8, x
  ldrsw x8, [x8, :lo12:x]
  adrp x9, y
  mov w10, #1
  ldr w8, [x8]
  ldrsw x9, [x9, :lo12:y]
  str w10, [x9]
  cbz w8, .LBB0_2   // LOL
  ret
  .LBB0_2:
  adrp x8, z
  ldrsw x8, [x8, :lo12:z]
  mov w9, #2
  str w9, [x8]
  ret

Anyway sorry for the noise... I believe I did not have the right set
of compiler options yesterday..

Thanks!

 - Joel