Re: [RFC PATCH] introduce sys_membarrier(): process-wide memory barrier

Steven Rostedt
2010-01-07T17:44:48Z

On Thu, 2010-01-07 at 09:31 -0800, Paul E. McKenney wrote:

> Something like the following for sys_membarrier(), then?
>
> smp_mb();
> for_each_cpu(cpu, current->mm->cpu_vm_mask) {
> if (cpu_curr(cpu)->mm == current->mm)
> smp_call_function_single(cpu, func, NULL, 1);
> }
>
> Then the code changing ->mm on the other CPU also needs to have a
> full smp_mb() somewhere after the change to ->mm, but before starting
> user-space execution. Which it might well just due to overhead, but
> we need to make sure that someone doesn't optimize us out of existence.

To change the mm requires things like flushing the TLB. I'd be surprised
if the change of the mm does not already do a smp_mb() somewhere.

-- Steve