> How these later loads can be completely independent of the pointer
> value? They need to obtain the pointer value from somewhere. And this
> can only be done by loaded it. And if a thread loads a pointer and
> then dereferences that pointer, that's a data/address dependency and
> we assume this is now covered by READ_ONCE.
The "dependency" I was considering here is a dependency _between the
load of sig->stats in taskstats_tgid_alloc() and the (program-order)
later loads of *(sig->stats) in taskstats_exit(). Roughly speaking,
such a dependency should correspond to a dependency chain at the asm
or registers level from the first load to the later loads; e.g., in:
Thread [register r0 contains the address of sig->stats]
A: LOAD r1,[r0] // LOAD_ACQUIRE sig->stats
...
B: LOAD r2,[r0] // LOAD *(sig->stats)
C: LOAD r3,[r2]
there would be no such dependency from A to C. Compare, e.g., with:
Thread [register r0 contains the address of sig->stats]
A: LOAD r1,[r0] // LOAD_ACQUIRE sig->stats
...
C: LOAD r3,[r1] // LOAD *(sig->stats)
AFAICT, there's no guarantee that the compilers will generate such a
dependency from the code under discussion.
> Or these later loads of the pointer can also race with the store? If
> so, I think they also need to use READ_ONCE (rather than turn this earlier
> pointer load into acquire).
AFAICT, _if the LOAD_ACQUIRE reads from the mentioned STORE_RELEASE,
then the former must induce enough synchronization to eliminate data
races (as well as any undesired re-ordering).
TBH, I am not familiar enough with the underlying logic of this code
to say whether that "if .. reads from .." pre-condition holds by the
time those *(sig->stats) execute.
Thanks,
Andrea
