From: Jonas Oberhauser <jonas.oberhauser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> As stated in the documentation and implied by its name, the ppo (preserved program order) relation is intended to link po-earlier to po-later instructions under certain conditions. However, a corner case currently allows instructions to be linked by ppo that are not executed by the same thread, i.e., instructions are being linked that have no po relation. This happens due to the mb/strong-fence/fence relations, which (as one case) provide order when locks are passed between threads followed by an smp_mb__after_unlock_lock() fence. This is illustrated in the following litmus test (as can be seen when using herd7 with `doshow ppo`): P0(spinlock_t *x, spinlock_t *y) { spin_lock(x); spin_unlock(x); } P1(spinlock_t *x, spinlock_t *y) { spin_lock(x); smp_mb__after_unlock_lock(); *y = 1; } The ppo relation will link P0's spin_lock(x) and P1's *y=1, because P0 passes a lock to P1 which then uses this fence. The patch makes ppo a subrelation of po by letting fence contribute to ppo only in case the fence links events of the same thread. Signed-off-by: Jonas Oberhauser <jonas.oberhauser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Alan Stern <stern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxx> --- tools/memory-model/linux-kernel.cat | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/tools/memory-model/linux-kernel.cat b/tools/memory-model/linux-kernel.cat index cfc1b8fd46da..adf3c4f41229 100644 --- a/tools/memory-model/linux-kernel.cat +++ b/tools/memory-model/linux-kernel.cat @@ -82,7 +82,7 @@ let rwdep = (dep | ctrl) ; [W] let overwrite = co | fr let to-w = rwdep | (overwrite & int) | (addr ; [Plain] ; wmb) let to-r = (addr ; [R]) | (dep ; [Marked] ; rfi) -let ppo = to-r | to-w | fence | (po-unlock-lock-po & int) +let ppo = to-r | to-w | (fence & int) | (po-unlock-lock-po & int) (* Propagation: Ordering from release operations and strong fences. *) let A-cumul(r) = (rfe ; [Marked])? ; r -- 2.40.0.rc2