Re: Interrupts, smp_load_acquire(), smp_store_release(), etc.

Paul E. McKenney
2018-10-20T21:04:23Z

On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 04:18:37PM -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Oct 2018, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
>
> > The second (informal) litmus test has a more interesting Linux-kernel
> > counterpart:
> >
> > void t1_interrupt(void)
> > {
> > r0 = READ_ONCE(y);
> > smp_store_release(&x, 1);
> > }
> >
> > void t1(void)
> > {
> > smp_store_release(&y, 1);
> > }
> >
> > void t2(void)
> > {
> > r1 = smp_load_acquire(&x);
> > r2 = smp_load_acquire(&y);
> > }
> >
> > On store-reordering architectures that implement smp_store_release()
> > as a memory-barrier instruction followed by a store, the interrupt could
> > arrive betweentimes in t1(), so that there would be no ordering between
> > t1_interrupt()'s store to x and t1()'s store to y. This could (again,
> > in paranoid theory) result in the outcome r0==0 && r1==0 && r2==1.
>
> This is disconcerting only if we assume that t1_interrupt() has to be
> executed by the same CPU as t1(). If the interrupt could be fielded by
> a different CPU then the paranoid outcome is perfectly understandable,
> even in an SC context.
>
> So the question really should be limited to situations where a handler
> is forced to execute in the context of a particular thread. While
> POSIX does allow such restrictions for user programs, I'm not aware of
> any similar mechanism in the kernel.

Good point, and I was in fact assuming that t1() and t1_interrupt()
were executing on the same CPU.

This sort of thing happens naturally in the kernel when both t1()
and t1_interrupt() are accessing per-CPU variables.

Thanx, Paul