https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=80728
--- Comment #2 from Alexander Monakov <amonakov at gcc dot gnu.org> --- Nowadays C has atomics and fences in the language standard, so it doesn't matter if x() had asm volatile("":::"memory"); or __atomic_{signal,thread}_fence(__ATOMIC_ACQ_REL); or return __atomic_load_n(&b, __ATOMIC_SEQ_CST); In all three cases the compiler needs to place a memory barrier internally, and in the latter two it's impossible to argue that the source code is missing a clobber. I think it's correct that "memory" clobber cannot touch non-addressable auto vars, but extending that to static variables seems wrong. I'm not aware of any instance (apart from this bug) where gcc does that.