Re: [PATCH 0/24] make atomic_read() behave consistently across all architectures

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Fri, 17 Aug 2007, Chris Friesen wrote:
> 
> I assume you mean "except for IO-related code and 'random' values like
> jiffies" as you mention later on?

Yes. There *are* valid uses for "volatile", but they have remained the 
same for the last few years:
 - "jiffies"
 - internal per-architecture IO implementations that can do them as normal 
   stores.

> I assume other values set in interrupt handlers would count as "random" 
> from a volatility perspective?

I don't really see any valid case. I can imagine that you have your own 
"jiffy" counter in a driver, but what's the point, really? I'd suggest not 
using volatile, and using barriers instead.

> 
> > So anybody who argues for "volatile" fixing bugs is fundamentally 
> > incorrect. It does NO SUCH THING. By arguing that, such people only 
> > show that you have no idea what they are talking about.

> What about reading values modified in interrupt handlers, as in your 
> "random" case?  Or is this a bug where the user of atomic_read() is 
> invalidly expecting a read each time it is called?

Quite frankly, the biggest reason for using "volatile" on jiffies was 
really historic. So even the "random" case is not really a very strong 
one. You'll notice that anybody who is actually careful will be using 
sequence locks for the jiffy accesses, if only because the *full* jiffy 
count is actually a 64-bit value, and so you cannot get it atomically on a 
32-bit architecture even on a single CPU (ie a timer interrupt might 
happen in between reading the low and the high word, so "volatile" is only 
used for the low 32 bits).

So even for jiffies, we actually have:

	extern u64 __jiffy_data jiffies_64;
	extern unsigned long volatile __jiffy_data jiffies;

where the *real* jiffies is not volatile: the volatile one is using linker 
tricks to alias the low 32 bits:

 - arch/i386/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S:

	...
	jiffies = jiffies_64;
	...

and the only reason we do all these games is (a) it works and (b) it's 
legacy.

Note how I do *not* say "(c) it's a good idea".

			Linus