Re: [patch 134/149] x86, paravirt: Add a global synchronization point for pvclock

Jeremy Fitzhardinge
2010-07-14T17:57:30Z

On 07/14/2010 10:45 AM, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 07/14/2010 10:34 AM, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
>
>> On 07/14/2010 10:30 AM, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>>
>>> If gcc ever starts reordering volatile operations, including "asm
>>> volatile", the kernel will break, and will be unfixable. Just about
>>> every single driver will break. All over the kernel we're explicitly or
>>> implicitly making the assumption that volatile operations are strictly
>>> ordered by the compiler with respect to each other.
>>>
>> Can you give an example? All the cases I've seen rely on the ordering
>> properties of "memory" clobbers, which is sound. (And volatile
>> variables are a completely unrelated issue, of course.)
>>
>>
> I/O ports, for example.
>

Yes, it looks like they should have memory barriers if we want them to
be ordered with respect to normal writes; afaict "asm volatile" has
never had strict ordering wrt memory ops.

Anything else?

J