On Tue, Jun 04, 2019 at 02:14:49PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
>
> Yeah, I know, even with the "volatile" keyword, it is not entirely clear
> how much reordering the compiler is allowed to do. I was relying on
> https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Extended-Asm.html, which says:
The volatile keyword doesn't give any guarantees of this kind.
The key to ensuring ordering between unrelated variable/register
reads/writes is the memory clobber:
6.47.2.6 Clobbers and Scratch Registers
...
"memory" The "memory" clobber tells the compiler that the assembly
code performs memory reads or writes to items other than those
listed in the input and output operands (for example, accessing
the memory pointed to by one of the input parameters). To ensure
memory contains correct values, GCC may need to flush specific
register values to memory before executing the asm. Further,
the compiler does not assume that any values read from memory
before an asm remain unchanged after that asm; it reloads them as
needed. Using the "memory" clobber effectively forms a read/write
memory barrier for the compiler.
Note that this clobber does not prevent the processor from
doing speculative reads past the asm statement. To prevent that,
you need processor-specific fence instructions.
IOW you need a barrier().
Thanks,
--
Email: Herbert Xu <herb...@gondor.apana.org.au>
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