netdev - Re: [PATCH tip/core/rcu 21/21] drivers/vhost: Remove now-redundant read_barrier

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Date:   Tue, 5 Dec 2017 20:17:33 +0100
From:   Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
To:     "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>
Cc:     "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, mingo@...nel.org,
        jiangshanlai@...il.com, dipankar@...ibm.com,
        akpm@...ux-foundation.org, mathieu.desnoyers@...icios.com,
        josh@...htriplett.org, tglx@...utronix.de, rostedt@...dmis.org,
        dhowells@...hat.com, edumazet@...gle.com, fweisbec@...il.com,
        oleg@...hat.com, Jason Wang <jasowang@...hat.com>,
        kvm@...r.kernel.org, virtualization@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
        netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH tip/core/rcu 21/21] drivers/vhost: Remove now-redundant
 read_barrier_depends()

On Tue, Dec 05, 2017 at 08:57:46PM +0200, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:

> I don't see WRITE_ONCE inserting any barriers, release or
> write.

Correct, never claimed there was.

Just saying that:

	obj = READ_ONCE(*foo);
	val = READ_ONCE(obj->val);

Never needs a barrier (except on Alpha and we want to make that go
away). Simply because a CPU needs to complete the load of @obj before it
can compute the address &obj->val. Thus the second load _must_ come
after the first load and we get LOAD-LOAD ordering.

Alpha messing that up is a royal pain, and Alpha not being an
active/living architecture is just not worth the pain of keeping this in
the generic model.