Re: MMIO and gcc re-ordering (Was: [PATCH] [POWERPC] Improve (in|out)_beXX() asm code)

Benjamin Herrenschmidt
2008-05-23T12:51:22Z

On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 08:36 -0400, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
>
> - mandate some kind of dma_sync_for_device/cpu on consistent memory.
> Almost no driver do that currently tho. They only do that for non
> consistent memory mapped with dma_map_*.
>
> - mandate the use of wmb,rmb,mb barriers for use between memory
> accesses and MMIOs for ordering them. (ie. fix drivers that don't do
> it). Advantage for powerpc is that I can remove (after some auditing of
> course) the added heavy barriers in the MMIO accessors themselves.

Note that the above is my preferred approach, and a lot of drivers
happen to already do this.

> - stick a full memory clobber in all MMIO (and PIO) accessors on all
> archs.
>
> Any other idea ? preference ?