Re: [RFC][PATCH 02/24] arc: Provide atomic_{or,xor,and}

Peter Zijlstra
2015-07-10T07:05:35Z

On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 04:30:46AM +0000, Vineet Gupta wrote:
>
> Since we are on the topic, the cmpxchg() loop in arch/arc/kernel/smp.c still
> irritates me.
> Do we need a new set of primitives to operate atomically on non atomic_t data or
> does that mean that the data *not* being atomic_t but requiring such semantics is
> the fundamental problem and thus needs to be converted first.

So if you look at the last patch, there's already a few sites that do
things like:

+ atomic_or(*mask, (atomic_t *)&flushcache_cpumask);

Which is of course ugly as hell, but does work.

Esp. inside arch code.

Now the 'problem' with cmpxchg/xchg, the instructions working on !atomic
data is:

http://lkml.kernel.org/r/alpine.LRH.2.02.1406011342470.20831@file01.intranet.prod.int.rdu2.redhat.com
http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20140606175316.GV13930@laptop.programming.kicks-ass.net

And note that includes some arc.

Adding more such primitives will only make it harder on those already
'broken' archs.