linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH RFC 0/2] rcu box container for Rust + maple tree load

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Message-ID: <aXDS6rNbsWhDVGK9@google.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:21:46 +0000
From: Alice Ryhl <aliceryhl@...gle.com>
To: Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@...il.com>
Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...nel.org>, "Liam R. Howlett" <Liam.Howlett@...cle.com>, 
	Gary Guo <gary@...yguo.net>, Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@...nel.org>, 
	"Björn Roy Baron" <bjorn3_gh@...tonmail.com>, Benno Lossin <lossin@...nel.org>, 
	Andreas Hindborg <a.hindborg@...nel.org>, Trevor Gross <tmgross@...ch.edu>, 
	Danilo Krummrich <dakr@...nel.org>, Frederic Weisbecker <frederic@...nel.org>, 
	Neeraj Upadhyay <neeraj.upadhyay@...nel.org>, Joel Fernandes <joelagnelf@...dia.com>, 
	Josh Triplett <josh@...htriplett.org>, Uladzislau Rezki <urezki@...il.com>, 
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>, Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...icios.com>, 
	Lai Jiangshan <jiangshanlai@...il.com>, Zqiang <qiang.zhang@...ux.dev>, 
	Andrew Ballance <andrewjballance@...il.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, 
	rust-for-linux@...r.kernel.org, rcu@...r.kernel.org, 
	maple-tree@...ts.infradead.org, linux-mm@...ck.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC 0/2] rcu box container for Rust + maple tree load_rcu

On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 09:14:05PM +0800, Boqun Feng wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 12:10:54PM +0000, Alice Ryhl wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 10:00:19PM +0800, Boqun Feng wrote:
> > > On Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 01:12:08PM +0000, Alice Ryhl wrote:
> > > [...]
> > > > > > 1) "relaxed atomic" does not sound like something that provides an
> > > > > >    address dependency to me.
> > > > > 
> > > > > If you look at rcu_dereference(), it's a READ_ONCE(), which is the same
> > > > > as a relaxed atomic load, and yes in LKMM, relaxed atomic load provides
> > > > > address dependency (Please see the DEPENDENCY part in
> > > > > tools/memory-model/Documentation/explanation.txt).
> > > > 
> > > > You argued that we should rename READ_ONCE() to atomic load on that
> > > > other patch series because "atomic load" naming is better than what LKMM
> > > > normally uses. Fine, but relaxed atomic load is a much worse name than
> > > 
> > > To be clear, in that series, my argument was not about naming, it's
> > > about READ_ONCE() being more powerful than atomic load (no, not because
> > > of address dependency, they are the same on that, it's because of the
> > > behaviors of them regarding a current access on the same memory
> > > location), and we want user to specify the intention more clearly.
> > 
> > Expressing intent more clearly is fine with me. I still think it's weird
> > for us to not have READ_ONCE() when it's a primitive operation of our
> > memory model, though.
> > 
> 
> But in our memory model, it's exact the same as atomic_read() (see
> tools/memory-model/linux-kernel.def and search for "atomic_read"), so
> why do we want to have both? ;-)

I've been saying Rust should have both because I've been repeatedly told
that they are different. If READ_ONCE() and atomic_load() are the same,
then I retract my concern.

> > And I also think we should consider using an implementation along the
> > lines of what I shared for our atomic_load() or READ_ONCE() or whatever
> > you wish to call it. The perf impact of helpers makes me sad.
> > 
> 
> I'm not totally against that, it'll actually help Atomic as well, I also
> hope that we can use `asm!()` to implement the cases where
> `{read,write}_volatile()` cannot cover. However currently I would rely
> on helper inlining to resolve this to avoid duplicate implementations.

I'm in favor of using helpers to begin with. I think it's probably worth
to do atomic_load() before we do the other ops, since it's so much
simpler to implement that particular operation than the ones using asm.

Alice