Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/24] make atomic_read() behave consistently across all architectures

From: Nick Piggin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:31:11 +1000

Satyam Sharma wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 17 Aug 2007, Nick Piggin wrote:
> 
> 
>>Satyam Sharma wrote:
>>[...]
>>
>>>Granted, the above IS buggy code. But, the stated objective is to avoid
>>>heisenbugs.
> 
>     ^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> 
>>Anyway, why are you making up code snippets that are buggy in other
>>ways in order to support this assertion being made that lots of kernel
>>code supposedly depends on volatile semantics. Just reference the
>>actual code.
> 
> 
> Because the point is *not* about existing bugs in kernel code. At some
> point Chris Snook (who started this thread) did write that "If I knew
> of the existing bugs in the kernel, I would be sending patches for them,
> not this series" or something to that effect.
> 
> The point is about *author expecations*. If people do expect atomic_read()
> (or a variant thereof) to have volatile semantics, why not give them such
> a variant?

Because they should be thinking about them in terms of barriers, over
which the compiler / CPU is not to reorder accesses or cache memory
operations, rather than "special" "volatile" accesses. Linux's whole
memory ordering and locking model is completely geared around the
former.

> And by the way, the point is *also* about the fact that cpu_relax(), as
> of today, implies a full memory clobber, which is not what a lot of such
> loops want. (due to stuff mentioned elsewhere, summarized in that summary)

That's not the point, because as I also mentioned, the logical extention
to Linux's barrier API to handle this is the order(x) macro. Again, not
special volatile accessors.