This means that ACQUIRE acts as a minimal "acquire" operation and
RELEASE acts as a minimal "release" operation.
-A subset of the atomic operations described in core-api/atomic_ops.rst have
-ACQUIRE and RELEASE variants in addition to fully-ordered and relaxed (no
-barrier semantics) definitions. For compound atomics performing both a load
-and a store, ACQUIRE semantics apply only to the load and RELEASE semantics
-apply only to the store portion of the operation.
+A subset of the atomic operations described in atomic_t.txt have ACQUIRE and
+RELEASE variants in addition to fully-ordered and relaxed (no barrier
+semantics) definitions. For compound atomics performing both a load and a
+store, ACQUIRE semantics apply only to the load and RELEASE semantics apply
+only to the store portion of the operation.
Memory barriers are only required where there's a possibility of interaction
between two CPUs or between a CPU and a device. If it can be guaranteed that
This enforces the occurrence of one of the two implications, and prevents the
third possibility from arising.
-A data-dependency barrier must also order against dependent writes:
+
+[!] Note that this extremely counterintuitive situation arises most easily on
+machines with split caches, so that, for example, one cache bank processes
+even-numbered cache lines and the other bank processes odd-numbered cache
+lines. The pointer P might be stored in an odd-numbered cache line, and the
+variable B might be stored in an even-numbered cache line. Then, if the
+even-numbered bank of the reading CPU's cache is extremely busy while the
+odd-numbered bank is idle, one can see the new value of the pointer P (&B),
+but the old value of the variable B (2).
+
+
+A data-dependency barrier is not required to order dependent writes
+because the CPUs that the Linux kernel supports don't do writes
+until they are certain (1) that the write will actually happen, (2)
+of the location of the write, and (3) of the value to be written.
+But please carefully read the "CONTROL DEPENDENCIES" section and the
+Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.txt file: The compiler can and does
+break dependencies in a great many highly creative ways.
CPU 1 CPU 2
=============== ===============
<write barrier>
WRITE_ONCE(P, &B);
Q = READ_ONCE(P);
- <data dependency barrier>
- *Q = 5;
+ WRITE_ONCE(*Q, 5);
-The data-dependency barrier must order the read into Q with the store
-into *Q. This prohibits this outcome:
+Therefore, no data-dependency barrier is required to order the read into
+Q with the store into *Q. In other words, this outcome is prohibited,
+even without a data-dependency barrier:
(Q == &B) && (B == 4)
Please note that this pattern should be rare. After all, the whole point
of dependency ordering is to -prevent- writes to the data structure, along
with the expensive cache misses associated with those writes. This pattern
-can be used to record rare error conditions and the like, and the ordering
-prevents such records from being lost.
-
-
-[!] Note that this extremely counterintuitive situation arises most easily on
-machines with split caches, so that, for example, one cache bank processes
-even-numbered cache lines and the other bank processes odd-numbered cache
-lines. The pointer P might be stored in an odd-numbered cache line, and the
-variable B might be stored in an even-numbered cache line. Then, if the
-even-numbered bank of the reading CPU's cache is extremely busy while the
-odd-numbered bank is idle, one can see the new value of the pointer P (&B),
-but the old value of the variable B (2).
+can be used to record rare error conditions and the like, and the CPUs'
+naturally occurring ordering prevents such records from being lost.
The data dependency barrier is very important to the RCU system,
This makes sure that the death mark on the object is perceived to be set
*before* the reference counter is decremented.
- See Documentation/core-api/atomic_ops.rst for more information. See the
- "Atomic operations" subsection for information on where to use these.
+ See Documentation/atomic_{t,bitops}.txt for more information.
(*) lockless_dereference();
ACQUIRE operation has completed.
Memory operations issued before the ACQUIRE may be completed after
- the ACQUIRE operation has completed. An smp_mb__before_spinlock(),
- combined with a following ACQUIRE, orders prior stores against
- subsequent loads and stores. Note that this is weaker than smp_mb()!
- The smp_mb__before_spinlock() primitive is free on many architectures.
+ the ACQUIRE operation has completed.
(2) RELEASE operation implication:
some don't, but they're very heavily relied on as a group throughout the
kernel.
-Any atomic operation that modifies some state in memory and returns information
-about the state (old or new) implies an SMP-conditional general memory barrier
-(smp_mb()) on each side of the actual operation (with the exception of
-explicit lock operations, described later). These include:
-
- xchg();
- atomic_xchg(); atomic_long_xchg();
- atomic_inc_return(); atomic_long_inc_return();
- atomic_dec_return(); atomic_long_dec_return();
- atomic_add_return(); atomic_long_add_return();
- atomic_sub_return(); atomic_long_sub_return();
- atomic_inc_and_test(); atomic_long_inc_and_test();
- atomic_dec_and_test(); atomic_long_dec_and_test();
- atomic_sub_and_test(); atomic_long_sub_and_test();
- atomic_add_negative(); atomic_long_add_negative();
- test_and_set_bit();
- test_and_clear_bit();
- test_and_change_bit();
-
- /* when succeeds */
- cmpxchg();
- atomic_cmpxchg(); atomic_long_cmpxchg();
- atomic_add_unless(); atomic_long_add_unless();
-
-These are used for such things as implementing ACQUIRE-class and RELEASE-class
-operations and adjusting reference counters towards object destruction, and as
-such the implicit memory barrier effects are necessary.
-
-
-The following operations are potential problems as they do _not_ imply memory
-barriers, but might be used for implementing such things as RELEASE-class
-operations:
-
- atomic_set();
- set_bit();
- clear_bit();
- change_bit();
-
-With these the appropriate explicit memory barrier should be used if necessary
-(smp_mb__before_atomic() for instance).
-
-
-The following also do _not_ imply memory barriers, and so may require explicit
-memory barriers under some circumstances (smp_mb__before_atomic() for
-instance):
-
- atomic_add();
- atomic_sub();
- atomic_inc();
- atomic_dec();
-
-If they're used for statistics generation, then they probably don't need memory
-barriers, unless there's a coupling between statistical data.
-
-If they're used for reference counting on an object to control its lifetime,
-they probably don't need memory barriers because either the reference count
-will be adjusted inside a locked section, or the caller will already hold
-sufficient references to make the lock, and thus a memory barrier unnecessary.
-
-If they're used for constructing a lock of some description, then they probably
-do need memory barriers as a lock primitive generally has to do things in a
-specific order.
-
-Basically, each usage case has to be carefully considered as to whether memory
-barriers are needed or not.
-
-The following operations are special locking primitives:
-
- test_and_set_bit_lock();
- clear_bit_unlock();
- __clear_bit_unlock();
-
-These implement ACQUIRE-class and RELEASE-class operations. These should be
-used in preference to other operations when implementing locking primitives,
-because their implementations can be optimised on many architectures.
-
-[!] Note that special memory barrier primitives are available for these
-situations because on some CPUs the atomic instructions used imply full memory
-barriers, and so barrier instructions are superfluous in conjunction with them,
-and in such cases the special barrier primitives will be no-ops.
-
-See Documentation/core-api/atomic_ops.rst for more information.
+See Documentation/atomic_t.txt for more information.
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