Subject: Re: RFC on writel and writel_relaxed

From: Will Deacon <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2018 11:09:44 +0100

On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 12:05:06PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 11:57 AM, Will Deacon <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> >
> > From db0daeaf94f0f6232f8206fc07a74211324b11d9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> > From: Will Deacon <[email-masked]>
> > Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2018 10:49:58 +0100
> > Subject: [PATCH] docs/memory-barriers.txt: Fix broken DMA vs MMIO ordering
> >  example
> >
> > The section of memory-barriers.txt that describes the dma_Xmb() barriers
> > has an incorrect example claiming that a wmb() is required after writing
> > to coherent memory in order for those writes to be visible to a device
> > before a subsequent MMIO access using writel() can reach the device.
> >
> > In fact, this ordering guarantee is provided (at significant cost on some
> > architectures such as arm and power) by writel, so the wmb() is not
> > necessary. writel_relaxed exists for cases where this ordering is not
> > required.
> >
> > Fix the example and update the text to make this clearer.
> >
> > Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <[email-masked]>
> > Cc: Arnd Bergmann <[email-masked]>
> > Cc: Jason Gunthorpe <[email-masked]>
> > Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" <[email-masked]>
> > Cc: Peter Zijlstra <[email-masked]>
> > Cc: Ingo Molnar <[email-masked]>
> > Cc: Jonathan Corbet <[email-masked]>
> > Reported-by: Sinan Kaya <[email-masked]>
> > Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <[email-masked]>
> > ---
> >  Documentation/memory-barriers.txt | 18 ++++++++++--------
> >  1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
> > index a863009849a3..2556b4b0e6f9 100644
> > --- a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
> > +++ b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
> > @@ -1909,9 +1909,6 @@ There are some more advanced barrier functions:
> >                 /* assign ownership */
> >                 desc->status = DEVICE_OWN;
> >
> > -               /* force memory to sync before notifying device via MMIO */
> > -               wmb();
> > -
> >                 /* notify device of new descriptors */
> >                 writel(DESC_NOTIFY, doorbell);
> >         }
> > @@ -1919,11 +1916,16 @@ There are some more advanced barrier functions:
> >       The dma_rmb() allows us guarantee the device has released ownership
> >       before we read the data from the descriptor, and the dma_wmb() allows
> >       us to guarantee the data is written to the descriptor before the device
> > -     can see it now has ownership.  The wmb() is needed to guarantee that the
> > -     cache coherent memory writes have completed before attempting a write to
> > -     the cache incoherent MMIO region.
> > -
> > -     See Documentation/DMA-API.txt for more information on consistent memory.
> > +     can see it now has ownership.  Note that, when using writel(), a prior
> > +     wmb() is not needed to guarantee that the cache coherent memory writes
> > +     have completed before writing to the cache incoherent MMIO region.
> > +     If this ordering between incoherent MMIO and coherent memory regions
> > +     is not required, writel_relaxed() can be used instead and is significantly
> > +     cheaper on some weakly-ordered architectures.
> 
> I think that's a great improvement, but I'm a bit worried about recommending
> writel_relaxed() too much: I've seen a lot of drivers that just always use
> writel_relaxed() over write(), and some of them get that wrong when they
> don't understand the difference but end up using DMA without explicit
> barriers anyway.
> 
> Also, having an architecture-independent driver use wmb()+writel_relaxed()
> ends up being more expensive than just using write(). Not sure how to
> best phrase it though.

Perhaps I add reword that with a simple example to say:

  If this ordering between incoherent MMIO and coherent memory regions
  is not required (e.g. in a sequence of accesses all to the MMIO region)
  [...]

since that seems to be the usual case where the _relaxed accessors help.

Will