The 64-bit cmpxchg operation on the lockref is ordered by virtue of hazarding between the cmpxchg operation and the reference count manipulation. On weakly ordered memory architectures (such as ARM), it can be of great benefit to omit the barrier instructions where they are not needed. This patch moves the lockless lockref code over to the new cmpxchg64_relaxed operation, which doesn't provide barrier semantics. Cc: Waiman Long <Waiman.Long@xxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@xxxxxxx> --- So here's a quick stab at allowing the memory barrier semantics to be avoided on weakly ordered architectures. This helps ARM, but it would be interesting to see if ia64 gets a boost too (although I've not relaxed their cmpxchg because there is uapi stuff involved that I wasn't comfortable refactoring). lib/lockref.c | 5 +++-- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/lib/lockref.c b/lib/lockref.c index 677d036..6d896ab 100644 --- a/lib/lockref.c +++ b/lib/lockref.c @@ -14,8 +14,9 @@ while (likely(arch_spin_value_unlocked(old.lock.rlock.raw_lock))) { \ struct lockref new = old, prev = old; \ CODE \ - old.lock_count = cmpxchg64(&lockref->lock_count, \ - old.lock_count, new.lock_count); \ + old.lock_count = cmpxchg64_relaxed(&lockref->lock_count, \ + old.lock_count, \ + new.lock_count); \ if (likely(old.lock_count == prev.lock_count)) { \ SUCCESS; \ } \ -- 1.8.2.2 -- 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