Hi, This all started when Andrea Parri found a 'surprising' behaviour for x86:
http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190418125412.GA10817@andrea Basically we fail for: *x = 1; atomic_inc(u); smp_mb__after_atomic(); r0 = *y; Because, while the atomic_inc() implies memory order, it (surprisingly) does not provide a compiler barrier. This then allows the compiler to re-order like so: atomic_inc(u); *x = 1; smp_mb__after_atomic(); r0 = *y; Which the CPU is then allowed to re-order (under TSO rules) like: atomic_inc(u); r0 = *y; *x = 1; And this very much was not intended. This had me audit all the (strong) architectures that had weak smp_mb__{before,after}_atomic: ia64, mips, sparc, s390, x86, xtensa. Of those, only x86 and mips were affected. Looking at MIPS to solve this, led to the other MIPS patches. All these patches have been through 0day for quite a while. Paul, how do you want to route the MIPS bits?