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Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2015 11:42:53 -0700
From: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>,
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Subject: Re: [PATCH v5 05/10] seqlock: Better document
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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
> <paulmck@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