Re: [PATCH V4 1/3] cpufreq: Make sure frequency transitions are serialized

[Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 09:21:02AM +0000, Viresh Kumar wrote:
> @Catalin: We have a problem here and need your expert advice. After changing
> CPU frequency we need to call this code:
> 
> cpufreq_notify_post_transition();
> policy->transition_ongoing = false;
> 
> And the sequence must be like this only. Is this guaranteed without any
> memory barriers? cpufreq_notify_post_transition() isn't touching
> transition_ongoing at all..

The above sequence doesn't say much. As rmk said, the compiler wouldn't
reorder the transition_ongoing write before the function call. I think
most architectures (not sure about Alpha) don't do speculative stores,
so hardware wouldn't reorder them either. However, other stores inside
the cpufreq_notify_post_transition() could be reordered after
transition_ongoing store. The same for memory accesses after the
transition_ongoing update, they could be reordered before.

So what we actually need to know is what are the other relevant memory
accesses that require strict ordering with transition_ongoing.

What I find strange in your patch is that
cpufreq_freq_transition_begin() uses spinlocks around transition_ongoing
update but cpufreq_freq_transition_end() doesn't.

-- 
Catalin