On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 11:21:46AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 10:43 AM, Paul E. McKenney
> <paul...@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
> >
> > A shorthand for READ_ONCE + smp_read_barrier_depends() is the shiny
> > new lockless_dereference()
>
> Related side note - I think people should get used to seeing
> "smp_load_acquire()". It has well-defined memory ordering properties
> and should generally perform well on most architectures. It's (much)
> stronger than lockless_dereference(), and together with
> smp_store_release() you can make rather clear guarantees about passing
> data locklessly from one CPU to another.
>
> I'd like to see us use more of the pattern of
>
> - one thread does:
>
> .. allocate/create some data
> smp_store_release() to "expose it"
>
> - another thread does:
>
> smp_load_acquire() to read index/pointer/flag/whatever
> .. use the data any damn way you want ..
>
> and we should probably aim to prefer that pattern over a lot of our
> traditional memory barriers.
I couldn't agree more!
RCU made a similar move from open-coding smp_read_barrier_depends()
to using rcu_dereference() many years ago, and that change made RCU
code -much- easier to read and understand. I believe that moving
from smp_mb(), smp_rmb(), and smp_wmb() to smp_store_release() and
smp_load_acquire() will provide similar maintainability benefits.
Furthermore, when the current code uses smp_mb(), smp_store_release() and
smp_load_acquire() generate faster code on most architectures.
Thanx, Paul
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
