On 09/28/2011 11:49 AM, Linus Torvalds wrote: > But I don't care all *that* deeply. I do agree that the xaddw trick is > pretty tricky. I just happen to think that it's actually *less* tricky > than "read the upper bits separately and depend on subtle ordering > issues with another writer that happens at the same time on another > CPU". > > So I can live with either form - as long as it works. I think it might > be easier to argue that the xaddw is guaranteed to work, because all > values at all points are unarguably atomic (yeah, we read the lower > bits nonatomically, but as the owner of the lock we know that nobody > else can write them). Exactly. I just did a locked add variant, and while the code looks a little simpler, it definitely has more actual complexity to analyze. J -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html