Since commit 76ebbe78f739 ("locking/barriers: Add implicit
smp_read_barrier_depends() to READ_ONCE()"), there is no need to use
'smp_read_barrier_depends()' outside of the Alpha architecture code.
Unfortunately, there is precisely >one< user in the vhost code, and
there isn't an obvious 'READ_ONCE()' access making the barrier
redundant. However, on closer inspection (thanks, Jason), it appears
that vring synchronisation between the producer and consumer occurs via
the 'avail_idx' field, which is followed up by an 'rmb()' in
'vhost_get_vq_desc()', making the 'read_barrier_depends()' redundant on
Alpha.
Jason says:
| I'm also confused about the barrier here, basically in driver side
| we did:
|
| 1) allocate pages
| 2) store pages in indirect->addr
| 3) smp_wmb()
| 4) increase the avail idx (somehow a tail pointer of vring)
|
| in vhost we did:
|
| 1) read avail idx
| 2) smp_rmb()
| 3) read indirect->addr
| 4) read from indirect->addr
|
| It looks to me even the data dependency barrier is not necessary
| since we have rmb() which is sufficient for us to the correct
| indirect->addr and driver are not expected to do any writing to
| indirect->addr after avail idx is increased
Remove the redundant barrier invocation.
Suggested-by: Jason Wang <jasowang@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
drivers/vhost/vhost.c | 5 -----
1 file changed, 5 deletions(-)
diff --git a/drivers/vhost/vhost.c b/drivers/vhost/vhost.c
index 36ca2cf419bf..865bc91b783c 100644
--- a/drivers/vhost/vhost.c
+++ b/drivers/vhost/vhost.c
@@ -2128,11 +2128,6 @@ static int get_indirect(struct vhost_virtqueue *vq,
return ret;
}
iov_iter_init(&from, READ, vq->indirect, ret, len);
-
- /* We will use the result as an address to read from, so most
- * architectures only need a compiler barrier here. */
- read_barrier_depends();
-
count = len / sizeof desc;
/* Buffers are chained via a 16 bit next field, so
* we can have at most 2^16 of these. */
--
2.24.0.rc1.363.gb1bccd3e3d-goog
