Re: [RFC][PATCH 0/5] arch: atomic rework

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

On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 10:07 AM, Paul E. McKenney
<paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> Us Linux-kernel hackers will often need to use volatile semantics in
> combination with C11 atomics in most cases.  The C11 atomics do cover
> some of the reasons we currently use ACCESS_ONCE(), but not all of them --
> in particular, it allows load/store merging.

I really disagree with the "will need to use volatile".

We should never need to use volatile (outside of whatever MMIO we do
using C) if C11 defines atomics correctly.

Allowing load/store merging is *fine*. All sane CPU's do that anyway -
it's called a cache - and there's no actual reason to think that
"ACCESS_ONCE()" has to mean our current "volatile".

Now, it's possible that the C standards simply get atomics _wrong_, so
that they create visible semantics that are different from what a CPU
cache already does, but that's a plain bug in the standard if so.

But merging loads and stores is fine. And I *guarantee* it is fine,
exactly because CPU's already do it, so claiming that the compiler
couldn't do it is just insanity.

Now, there are things that are *not* fine, like speculative stores
that could be visible to other threads. Those are *bugs* (either in
the compiler or in the standard), and anybody who claims otherwise is
not worth discussing with.

But I really really disagree with the "we might have to use
'volatile'". Because if we *ever* have to use 'volatile' with the
standard C atomic types, then we're just better off ignoring the
atomic types entirely, because they are obviously broken shit - and
we're better off doing it ourselves the way we have forever.

Seriously. This is not even hyperbole. It really is as simple as that.

                  Linus