On Fri, 5 Jul 2019, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> ----- On Jul 5, 2019, at 4:49 AM, Ingo Molnar mi...@kernel.org wrote:
> > * Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoy...@efficios.com> wrote:
> >> The semantic I am looking for here is C11's relaxed atomics.
> >
> > What does this mean?
>
> C11 states:
>
> "Atomic operations specifying memory_order_relaxed are relaxed only with
> respect
> to memory ordering. Implementations must still guarantee that any given
> atomic access
> to a particular atomic object be indivisible with respect to all other atomic
> accesses
> to that object."
>
> So I am concerned that num_online_cpus() as proposed in this patch
> try to access __num_online_cpus non-atomically, and without using
> READ_ONCE().
>
>
> Similarly, the update-side should use WRITE_ONCE(). Protecting with a mutex
> does not provide mutual exclusion against concurrent readers of that variable.
Again. This is nothing new. The current implementation of num_online_cpus()
has no guarantees whatsoever.
bitmap_hweight() can be hit by a concurrent update of the mask it is
looking at.
num_online_cpus() gives you only the correct number if you invoke it inside
a cpuhp_lock held section. So why do we need that fuzz about atomicity now?
It's racy and was racy forever and even if we add that READ/WRITE_ONCE muck
then it still wont give you a reliable answer unless you hold cpuhp_lock at
least for read. So fore me that READ/WRITE_ONCE is just a cosmetic and
misleading reality distortion.
Thanks,
tglx
