Re: why are some atomic_t's not volatile, while most are?

[Chris Snook <csnook@redhat.com>]

Chris Friesen wrote:
> Chris Snook wrote:
> 
>> This is not a problem, since indirect references will cause the CPU to 
>> fetch the data from memory/cache anyway.
> 
> Isn't Zan's sample code (that shows the problem) already using indirect 
> references?

Yeah, I misinterpreted his conclusion.  I thought about this for a 
while, and realized that it's perfectly legal for the compiler to re-use 
a value obtained from atomic_read.  All that matters is that the read 
itself was atomic.  The use (or non-use) of the volatile keyword is 
really more relevant to the other atomic operations.  If you want to 
guarantee a re-read from memory, use barrier().  This, incidentally, 
uses volatile under the hood.

	-- Chris