On Wed, 15 Aug 2007, Christoph Lameter wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Aug 2007, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
>
> > Understood. My point is not that the impact is precisely zero, but
> > rather that the impact on optimization is much less hurtful than the
> > problems that could arise otherwise, particularly as compilers become
> > more aggressive in their optimizations.
>
> The problems arise because barriers are not used as required. Volatile
> has wishy washy semantics and somehow marries memory barriers with data
> access. It is clearer to separate the two. Conceptual cleanness usually
> translates into better code. If one really wants the volatile then lets
> make it explicit and use
>
> atomic_read_volatile()
Completely agreed, again. To summarize again (had done so about ~100 mails
earlier in this thread too :-) ...
atomic_{read,set}_volatile() -- guarantees volatility also along with
atomicity (the two _are_ different concepts after all, irrespective of
whether callsites normally want one with the other or not)
atomic_{read,set}_nonvolatile() -- only guarantees atomicity, compiler
free to elid / coalesce / optimize such accesses, can keep the object
in question cached in a local register, leads to smaller text, etc.
As to which one should be the default atomic_read() is a question of
whether majority of callsites (more weightage to important / hot
codepaths, lesser to obscure callsites) want a particular behaviour.
Do we have a consensus here? (hoping against hope, probably :-)
[ This thread has gotten completely out of hand ... for my mail client
alpine as well, it now seems. Reminds of that 1000+ GPLv3 fest :-) ]
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