On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 01:45:44PM -0800, Leonid Yegoshin wrote: > On 01/14/2016 01:34 PM, Paul E. McKenney wrote: > >On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 12:46:43PM -0800, Leonid Yegoshin wrote: > >>On 01/14/2016 12:15 PM, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > >>>On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 11:42:02AM -0800, Leonid Yegoshin wrote: > >>>>An the only point - please use an appropriate SYNC_* barriers instead of > >>>>heavy bold hammer. That stuff was design explicitly to support the > >>>>requirements of Documentation/memory-barriers.txt > >>>That's madness. That document changes from version to version as to what > >>>we _think_ the actual hardware does. It is _NOT_ a specification. > >>> > >>>You cannot design hardware from that. Its incomplete and fails to > >>>specify a bunch of things. It not a mathematically sound definition of a > >>>memory model. > >>> > >>>Please stop referring to that document for what a particular barrier > >>>_should_ do. Explain what MIPS does, so we can attempt to integrate > >>>this knowledge with our knowledge of PPC/ARM/Alpha/x86/etc. and improve > >>>upon our understanding of hardware and improve the Linux memory model. > >>I am afraid I can't help you here. It is very complicated stuff and > >>a model is actually doesn't fit your assumptions about CPUs well > >>without some simplifications which are based on what you want to > >>have. > >> > >>I say that SYNC_ACQUIRE/etc follows what you expect for smp_acquire > >>etc (basing on that document). And at least two CPU models were > >>tested with my patches (see it in LMO) for that last year and that > >>instructions are implemented now in engineering kernel. > >> > >>If you have something else in mind, you can ask me. But I prefer to > >>do not deviate too much from Documentation/memory-barriers.txt, for > >>exam - if it asks to have memory barrier somewhere, then I assume > >>the code should have it, and please - don't ask me a test which > >>violates the current version of document recommendations. > >> > >>For a moment I don't see a significant changes in this document for > >>MIPS Arch at least 1.5 year, and the only significant point is that > >>MIPS CPU Arch doesn't have yet smp_read_barrier_depends() and > >>smp_rmb() should be used instead. > > >Is SYNC_ACQUIRE a memory-barrier instruction that orders prior loads > >against later loads and stores? > > Yes, it is in MD00087 (table 6.6 of document Ver 6.04) - > https://imgtec.com/?do-download=4302 OK, it does look like it should work. Of course, if you can rely on straight address/data dependencies, that would be even better. > > If so, and if MIPS does not do > >ordering based on address and data dependencies, I suggest making > >read_barrier_depends() be a SYNC_ACQUIRE rather than SYNC_RMB. > > I understood that, after I see the example of using it. > Please consider to add that into Documentation/memory-barriers.txt > (it is not easy to find that this barrier is used for shared WRITE > basing on shared pointer), it would be helpful. Actually, the Linux kernel doesn't have an acquire barrier, just an smp_load_acquire(). Or did someone sneak one in while I wasn't looking? ;-) Thanx, Paul
