* Suresh Siddha <suresh.b.siddha@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, 2009-02-19 at 04:20 -0800, Ingo Molnar wrote: > > Could you please refresh this patch to latest tip:master? The > > APIC drivers moved to arch/x86/kernel/apic/. > > Appended the refreshed patch. Thanks. thanks. Two details i noticed: Firstly: > +++ b/arch/x86/kernel/apic/x2apic_cluster.c > +++ b/arch/x86/kernel/apic/x2apic_phys.c how about x2apic_uv.c? It uses uv_write_global_mmr64() in its IPI sending method, which uses: static inline void uv_write_global_mmr64(int pnode, unsigned long offset, unsigned long val) { *uv_global_mmr64_address(pnode, offset) = val; } which uses ->mmr_base, which is mapped via: init_extra_mapping_uc(UV_LOCAL_MMR_BASE, UV_LOCAL_MMR_SIZE); so it should be fine because uncached - but at minimum we should put a comment into x2apic_uv.c that the generic IPI code relies on the lowlevel code serializing - i.e. relies on the UC PAT attribute. Secondly, you added smp_mb(), which will translate to an MFENCE. But in theory it should be enough to have a wmb() here. [Note, not an smp_wmb() that i suggested before.] That will translate to an SFENCE - which will serialize writes but still allows reads/prefetches to pass. So the question is, is an SFENCE there enough to serialize the WRMSR with previous memory-writes? It's not specified in the x2apic docs as far as i could see. Ingo -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-arch" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html