Re: [RFC] LKMM: Add volatile_if()

Alan Stern
2021-06-06T18:41:55Z

On Sat, Jun 05, 2021 at 08:41:00PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 5, 2021 at 6:29 PM Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Interesting. And changing one of the branches from barrier() to __asm__
> > __volatile__("nop": : :"memory") also causes a branch to be emitted. So
> > even though the compiler doesn't "look inside" assembly code, it does
> > compare two pieces at least textually and apparently assumes if they are
> > identical then they do the same thing.
>
> That's actually a feature in some cases, ie the ability to do CSE on
> asm statements (ie the "always has the same output" optimization that
> the docs talk about).
>
> So gcc has always looked at the asm string for that reason, afaik.
>
> I think it's something of a bug when it comes to "asm volatile", but
> the documentation isn't exactly super-specific.
>
> There is a statement of "Under certain circumstances, GCC may
> duplicate (or remove duplicates of) your assembly code when
> optimizing" and a suggestion of using "%=" to generate a unique
> instance of an asm.
>
> Which might actually be a good idea for "barrier()", just in case.
> However, the problem with that is that I don't think we are guaranteed
> to have a universal comment character for asm statements.
>
> IOW, it might be a good idea to do something like
>
> #define barrier() \
> __asm__ __volatile__("# barrier %=": : :"memory")
>
> but I'm not 100% convinced that '#' is always a comment in asm code,
> so the above might not actually build everywhere.
>
> However, *testing* the above (in my config, where '#' does work as a
> comment character) shows that gcc doesn't actually consider them to be
> distinct EVEN THEN, and will still merge two barrier statements.
>
> That's distressing.
>
> So the gcc docs are actively wrong, and %= does nothing - it will
> still compare as the exact same inline asm, because the string
> equality testing is apparently done before any expansion.
>
> Something like this *does* seem to work:
>
> #define ____barrier(id) __asm__ __volatile__("#" #id: : :"memory")
> #define __barrier(id) ____barrier(id)
> #define barrier() __barrier(__COUNTER__)
>
> which is "interesting" or "disgusting" depending on how you happen to feel.
>
> And again - the above works only as long as "#" is a valid comment
> character in the assembler. And I have this very dim memory of us
> having comments in inline asm, and it breaking certain configurations
> (for when the assembler that the compiler uses is a special
> human-unfriendly one that only accepts compiler output).
>
> You could make even more disgusting hacks, and have it generate something like
>
> .pushsection .discard.barrier
> .long #id
> .popsection
>
> instead of a comment. We already expect that to work and have generic
> inline asm cases that generate code like that.

I tried the experiment with this code:

#define READ_ONCE(x) (*(volatile typeof(x) *)&(x))
#define WRITE_ONCE(x, val) (READ_ONCE(x) = (val))
#define barrier() __asm__ __volatile__("": : :"memory")

int x, y;

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
if (READ_ONCE(x)) {
barrier();
y = 1;
} else {
y = 1;
}
return 0;
}

The output from gcc -O2 is:

main:
mov eax, DWORD PTR x[rip]
test eax, eax
je .L2
.L2:
mov DWORD PTR y[rip], 1

The output from clang is essentially the same (the mov and test are
replaced by a cmp).

This does what we want, but I wouldn't bet against a future
optimization pass getting rid of the "useless" test and branch.

Alan