On Thu 27-08-15 14:43:34, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 02:27:27PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote: > > Hi, > > I have just stumbled over the comment above wake_up_process which > > claims: > > " > > * It may be assumed that this function implies a write memory barrier > > before > > * changing the task state if and only if any tasks are woken up. > > " > > > > but try_to_wake_up does smp_mb__before_spinlock and did smp_wmb > > since 04e2f1741d235 unconditionally. The comment was added when the > > smp_wmb was in place already so I am wondering whether the comment is > > wrong/misleading. > > > > Could somebody clarify please? > > Its true for wake_up(), since that bails early if the waitqueue list is > empty. > > I suspect there was no exception made for wake_up_process() to simplify > the rules.
Thanks for the confirmation. Shouldn't we rather change the documentation because this is clearly misleading and confusing. --- >From b70d9a384cfd018e686c0aca06e830f564a34dd9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Michal Hocko <mho...@suse.com> Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2015 15:10:55 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] sched: Clarigy wake_up_process memory barrier semantic wake_up_process unlike other wake up primitives based on __wake_up implies the write memory barrier unconditionally because it relies on try_to_wake_up directly. Clarify this in the function comment and memory-barriers.txt because the current doc is quite misleading. Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mho...@suse.com> --- Documentation/memory-barriers.txt | 3 +++ kernel/sched/core.c | 3 +-- 2 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt index 13feb697271f..c4f180caf0ff 100644 --- a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt +++ b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt @@ -2031,6 +2031,9 @@ something up. The barrier occurs before the task state is cleared, and so sits <general barrier> STORE current->state LOAD event_indicated +Please note that wake_up_process is an exception here because it implies +the write memory barrier unconditionally. + To repeat, this write memory barrier is present if and only if something is actually awakened. To see this, consider the following sequence of events, where X and Y are both initially zero: diff --git a/kernel/sched/core.c b/kernel/sched/core.c index 78b4bad10081..39583b76ad2c 100644 --- a/kernel/sched/core.c +++ b/kernel/sched/core.c @@ -1967,8 +1967,7 @@ static void try_to_wake_up_local(struct task_struct *p) * * Return: 1 if the process was woken up, 0 if it was already running. * - * It may be assumed that this function implies a write memory barrier before - * changing the task state if and only if any tasks are woken up. + * It may be assumed that this function implies a write memory barrier. */ int wake_up_process(struct task_struct *p) { -- 2.5.0 -- Michal Hocko SUSE Labs -- 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/