On Fri, Mar 14, 2025 at 2:08 PM Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 3/14/25 22:05, Alexei Starovoitov wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 12, 2025 at 1:29 AM Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > That's correct.
> >
> >> An if we e.g. have a pointer to memcg_stock_pcp through which we access the
> >> stock_lock an the other (protected) fields and that pointer doesn't change
> >> between that, I imagine gcc can reliably determine these can't alias?
> >
> > Though my last gcc commit was very long ago here is a simple example
> > where compiler can reorder/combine stores:
> > struct s {
> > short a, b;
> > } *p;
> > p->a = 1;
> > p->b = 2;
> > The compiler can keep them as-is, combine or reorder even with
> > -fno-strict-aliasing, because it can determine that a and b don't alias.
> >
> > But after re-reading gcc doc on volatiles again it's clear that
> > extra barriers are not necessary.
> > The main part:
> > "The minimum requirement is that at a sequence point all previous
> > accesses to volatile objects have stabilized"
> >
> > So anything after WRITE_ONCE(lt->acquired, 1); will not be hoisted up
> > and that's what we care about here.
>
> OK, is there similar guarantee for the unlock side? No write will be moved
> after WRITE_ONCE(lt->acquired, 0); there?
Yes, because the first line:
lt = this_cpu_ptr(lock);
WRITE_ONCE(lt->acquired, 0);
this_cpu_ptr is pretty much a black box for the compiler.
'lt' can alias with anything before it.
