From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Paul E. McKenney" Subject: Re: Interrupts, smp_load_acquire(), smp_store_release(), etc. Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2018 14:04:13 -0700 Message-ID: <20181020210413.GB2674@linux.ibm.com> References: <20181020161049.GA13756@linux.ibm.com> Reply-To: paulmck@linux.ibm.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Alan Stern Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, davidtgoldblatt@gmail.com, andrea.parri@amarulasolutions.com, will.deacon@arm.com, peterz@infradead.org, boqun.feng@gmail.com, npiggin@gmail.com, dhowells@redhat.com, j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk, luc.maranget@inria.fr, akiyks@gmail.com, dlustig@nvidia.com List-Id: linux-arch.vger.kernel.org On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 04:18:37PM -0400, Alan Stern wrote: > On Sat, 20 Oct 2018, Paul E. McKenney wrote: > > > The second (informal) litmus test has a more interesting Linux-kernel > > counterpart: > > > > void t1_interrupt(void) > > { > > r0 = READ_ONCE(y); > > smp_store_release(&x, 1); > > } > > > > void t1(void) > > { > > smp_store_release(&y, 1); > > } > > > > void t2(void) > > { > > r1 = smp_load_acquire(&x); > > r2 = smp_load_acquire(&y); > > } > > > > On store-reordering architectures that implement smp_store_release() > > as a memory-barrier instruction followed by a store, the interrupt could > > arrive betweentimes in t1(), so that there would be no ordering between > > t1_interrupt()'s store to x and t1()'s store to y. This could (again, > > in paranoid theory) result in the outcome r0==0 && r1==0 && r2==1. > > This is disconcerting only if we assume that t1_interrupt() has to be > executed by the same CPU as t1(). If the interrupt could be fielded by > a different CPU then the paranoid outcome is perfectly understandable, > even in an SC context. > > So the question really should be limited to situations where a handler > is forced to execute in the context of a particular thread. While > POSIX does allow such restrictions for user programs, I'm not aware of > any similar mechanism in the kernel. Good point, and I was in fact assuming that t1() and t1_interrupt() were executing on the same CPU. This sort of thing happens naturally in the kernel when both t1() and t1_interrupt() are accessing per-CPU variables. Thanx, Paul