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

Suresh Siddha
2009-02-18T18:35:15Z

On Wed, 2009-02-18 at 09:14 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Wed, 18 Feb 2009, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> >
> > an off-list comment pointed out this piece of information as
> > well:
> >
> > http://www.sandpile.org/ia32/coherent.htm
> >
> > A WRMSR to one of the x2APIC MSRs (0000_0800h...0000_0BFFh) is
> > not guaranteed to be serializing.
> >
> > So i suspect we should just enclose it in smp_mb() pairs to make
> > sure it's a full barrier in both directions?
>
> Why would we care about "both directions"?

on x86 we don't need in both directions.

>
> I think putting an sfence _before_ the wrmsr (and not even all of them -
> just put it in front of the "send IPI" sequence) should be fine. Any other
> ordering sounds like just unnecessary overhead to me.

For x2apic ipi's, we should use a serializing instruction or a "mfence"
instruction. "sfence" will not help in this scenario.

thanks,
suresh