Re: [PATCH 1/4] drm/i915: Only insert the mb() before updating the fence parameter

[Jesse Barnes <jbarnes@virtuousgeek.org>]

On Tue,  9 Oct 2012 19:24:37 +0100
Chris Wilson <chris@chris-wilson.co.uk> wrote:

> With a fence, we only need to insert a memory barrier around the actual
> fence alteration for CPU accesses through the GTT. Performing the
> barrier in flush-fence was inserting unnecessary and expensive barriers
> for never fenced objects.
> 
> Note removing the barriers from flush-fence, which was effectively a
> barrier before every direct access through the GTT, revealed that we
> where missing a barrier before the first access through the GTT. Lack of
> that barrier was sufficient to cause GPU hangs.
> 
> v2: Add a couple more comments to explain the new barriers
> 

The docs are slippery on MMIO vs cached accesses (less so on actual I/O
port ops), but this does look correct.

You might improve the comments a little and quote the IA32 manuals a
bit, saying that you're trying to order previous cached accesses with
subsequent MMIO accesses that will affect what the CPU reads or writes.

Other than that:
Reviewed-by: Jesse Barnes <jbarnes@virtuousgeek.org>

-- 
Jesse Barnes, Intel Open Source Technology Center