Re: [PATCH]: Sparc64 immediate values

[Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@polymtl.ca>]

Hi David,

I'm picking this patch up in my LTTng patchset for testing.

Thanks,

Mathieu

* David Miller (davem@davemloft.net) wrote:
> From: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@polymtl.ca>
> Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 08:36:15 -0400
> 
> > However, it does not protect from having a thread preempted in the
> > middle of this instruction sequence and therefore to see incoherent
> > values.
> 
> Yes, that makes such schemes unworkable, how hum...
> 
> > Are there non-maskable interrupts on sparc64 ?
> 
> Yes, and no.  When the PSTATE_IE bit is cleared in the
> processor state register, no interrupts whatsoever are
> recognized by the processor.  This is off only during
> trap entry/exit sequences, and some other special bits
> of code.
> 
> > The one thing we could do to allow such updates without using
> > stop_machine is to create something similar to the read seqlock using
> > immediate values.
> 
> Yes I saw such suggestions in the comments of the immediate code,
> you don't have to describe such things all over again.
> 
> Doing something so heavy like this in the "fast path" is completely
> pointless in my opinion.
> 
> Better to keep brainstorming on a scheme that works without adding any
> instructions to the immediate load sequence.  If you add instructions,
> fetching the instructions themselves become just as expensive, if not
> moreso, than the load we are eliminating.

-- 
Mathieu Desnoyers
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