Re: smp.c && barriers (Was: [PATCH 1/4] generic-smp: remove single ipi fallback for smp_call_function_many())

[Suresh Siddha <suresh.b.siddha@intel.com>]

On Wed, 2009-02-18 at 05:59 -0800, Nick Piggin wrote:
> You're saying the problem is in generic_exec_single because I've
> removed the smp_mb that inadvertently also serialises memory with
> the x2apic on x86?

yes.

> 
> Indeed that could cause problems on some architectures which I
> had hoped to avoid. So the patch is probably better off to first
> add the smp_mb() to arch_send_call_function_xxx arch code, unless
> it is immediately obvious or confirmed by arch maintainer that
> such barrier is not required.

For x2apic specific operations we should add the smp_mb() sequence. But
we need to make sure that we don't end up doing it twice (once in
generic code and another in arch code) for all the ipi paths.

thanks,
suresh