On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 04:02:47PM +0100, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> 2013/3/12 Paul E. McKenney <[email protected]>:
> > On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 12:03:23PM +0800, Ming Lei wrote:
> >> On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 11:39 AM, Paul E. McKenney
> >> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Atomic operations that return a value are required to act as full memory
> >> > barriers. This means that code relying on ordering provided by these
> >> > atomic operations must also do ordering, either by using an explicit
> >> > memory barrier or by relying on guarantees from atomic operations.
> >> >
> >> > For example:
> >> >
> >> > CPU 0 CPU 1
> >> >
> >> > X = 1; r1 = Z;
> >> > if (atomic_inc_unless_negative(&Y) smp_mb();
> >> > do_something();
> >> > Z = 1; r2 = X;
> >> >
> >> > Assuming X and Z are initially zero, if r1==1, we are guaranteed
> >> > that r2==1. However, CPU 1 needs its smp_mb() in order to pair with
> >> > the barrier implicit in atomic_inc_unless_negative().
> >> >
> >> > Make sense?
> >>
> >> Yes, it does, and thanks for the explanation.
> >>
> >> But looks the above example is not what Frederic described:
> >>
> >> "the above atomic_read() might return -1 because there is no
> >> guarantee it's seeing the recent update on the remote CPU."
> >>
> >> Even I am not sure if adding one smp_mb() around atomic_read()
> >> can guarantee that too.
> >
> > Frederic was likely thinking of some other scenario that would be
> > broken by atomic_inc_unless_negative() failing to act as a full
> > memory barrier. Here is another example:
> >
> >
> > CPU 0 CPU 1
> >
> > X = 1;
> > if (atomic_inc_unless_negative(&Y) r1 = atomic_xchg(&Y, -1);
> > r2 = X;
> >
> > If atomic_inc_unless_negative() acts as a full memory barrier, then
> > if CPU 0 reaches the assignment from X, the results will be guaranteed
> > to be 1. Otherwise, there is no guarantee.
>
> Your scenarios show an interesting guarantee I did not think about.
> But my concern was on such a situation:
>
> CPU 0 CPU 1
>
> atomic_set(&X, -1)
> atomic_inc(&X)
> atomic_add_unless_negative(&X, 5)
>
> On the above situation, CPU 0 may still see X == -1 and thus not add
> the 5. Of course all that only make sense with datas coming along.
That could happen, but you would need CPU 1 to carry out some other
reference for it to be a bug. Otherwise, CPU 1's atomic_inc() just
happened after all of CPU 0's code. But yes, it would be possible
to misorder with some larger scenario starting with this example.
Especially given that atomic_inc() does not make any ordering guarantees.
Thanx, Paul
Thanx, Paul
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