Re: [RFC PATCH] introduce sys_membarrier(): process-wide memory barrier (v3b)

Paul E. McKenney
2010-01-12T16:54:19Z

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 11:27:39AM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-01-12 at 10:38 -0500, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
>
> > > The UP-kernel case is handled by the #ifdef in sys_membarrier(), though
> > > with a bit larger code footprint than the embedded guys would probably
> > > prefer. (Or is the compiler smart enough to omit these function given no
> > > calls to them? If not, recommend putting them under CONFIG_SMP #ifdef.)
> >
> > Hrm, that's a bit odd. I agree that UP systems could simply return
> > -ENOSYS for sys_membarrier, but then I wonder how userland could
> > distinguish between:
> >
> > - an old kernel not supporting sys_membarrier()
> > -> in this case we need to use the smp_mb() fallback on the read-side
> > and in synchronize_rcu().
> > - a recent kernel supporting sys_membarrier(), CONFIG_SMP
> > -> can use the barrier() on read-side, call sys_membarrier upon
> > update.
> > - a recent kernel supporting sys_membarrier, !CONFIG_SMP
> > -> calls to sys_membarrier() are not required, nor is barrier().
> >
> > Or maybe we just postpone the userland smp_mb() question to another
> > thread. This will eventually need to be addressed anyway. Maybe with a
> > vgetmaxcpu() vsyscall.
>
> I think Paul means to wrap all your other functions under the #ifdef.
> What you have for sys_membarrier() is fine (just return 0 on UP) but you
> also need to wrap the helper function above it under #ifdef CONFIG_SMP.
> Don't rely on the compiler to optimize them out. If anything, you'll
> probably get a bunch of warnings about static functions unused.

Yes -- much clearer statement of what I was getting at. ;-)

Thanx, Paul