netdev - Re: [PATCH 0/24] make atomic_read() behave consistently across all architectures

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Date:	Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:35:45 +0530 (IST)
From:	Satyam Sharma <satyam@...radead.org>
To:	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
cc:	Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>,
	Stefan Richter <stefanr@...6.in-berlin.de>,
	Christoph Lameter <clameter@....com>,
	Chris Snook <csnook@...hat.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-arch@...r.kernel.org,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	netdev@...r.kernel.org, Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	ak@...e.de, heiko.carstens@...ibm.com, davem@...emloft.net,
	schwidefsky@...ibm.com, wensong@...ux-vs.org, horms@...ge.net.au,
	wjiang@...ilience.com, cfriesen@...tel.com, zlynx@....org,
	rpjday@...dspring.com, jesper.juhl@...il.com,
	segher@...nel.crashing.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/24] make atomic_read() behave consistently across all
 architectures



On Wed, 15 Aug 2007, Paul E. McKenney wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 10:48:28PM +0530, Satyam Sharma wrote:
> > [...]
> > Not for i386 and x86_64 -- those have atomic ops without any "volatile"
> > semantics (currently as per existing definitions).
> 
> I claim unit volumes with arm, and the majority of the architectures, but
> I cannot deny the popularity of i386 and x86_64 with many developers.  ;-)

Hmm, does arm really need that "volatile int counter;"? Hopefully RMK will
take a patch removing that "volatile" ... ;-)


> However, I am not aware of code in the kernel that would benefit
> from the compiler coalescing multiple atomic_set() and atomic_read()
> invocations, thus I don't see the downside to volatility in this case.
> Are there some performance-critical code fragments that I am missing?

I don't know, and yes, code with multiple atomic_set's and atomic_read's
getting optimized or coalesced does sound strange to start with. Anyway,
I'm not against "volatile semantics" per se. As replied elsewhere, I do
appreciate the motivation behind this series (to _avoid_ gotchas, not to
fix existing ones). Just that I'd like to avoid using "volatile", for
aforementioned reasons, especially given that there are perfectly
reasonable alternatives to achieve the same desired behaviour.


Satyam
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