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Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 14:06:07 -0700
From: Jun Sun <jsun@mvista.com>
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To: Florian Lohoff <flo@rfc822.org>
CC: Joe deBlaquiere <jadb@redhat.com>,
   "Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl>, ralf@oss.sgi.com,
   Pete Popov <ppopov@mvista.com>, George Gensure <werkt@csh.rit.edu>,
   linux-mips@oss.sgi.com
Subject: Re: MIPS_ATOMIC_SET again (Re: newest kernel
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Florian Lohoff wrote:

> My favourit would be to let the glibc on runtime decide whether
> to use sysmips or ll/sc in the atomic test_and_set stuff. This would
> lead to an common atom op in the userspace which is fast on ll/sc
> cpus and gives much lesser performance penaltys in the sysmips case
> than emulating ll/sc.
> 

Do you have an idea how this run-time detection might be implemented?  I am
very curious.  

For example, how will you figure out the existence of ll/sc instruction?  Is
that a test which is a part of every process startup procedure?  Or do you
introduce a new syscall?

Jun