Re: atomic RAM ?

[Michael Schnell <mschnell@lumino.de>]

On 04/08/2010 11:28 AM, David Newall wrote:
> Will the system use multiple cores?  If it's only single core, perhaps
> atomic operations are really necessary?
At the moment I am just planning a single core NIOS project. But SMP is
a decent option for NIOS, as it is no hardware problem - and often has
been requested - to design multiple CPUs in a single in such an FPGA and
run SMP Linux on it.

OTOH, to do FUTEX in full (MMU) - Linux, atomic operations are
definitively necessary, as in Userland you can't disable the interrupt
without a Kernel call (which to avoid FUTEX is all about.) Currently the
plan with the NIOS (MMU, non-SMP) arch is to simulate atomic operations
with the said "atomic region" (as is done with e.g. the BlackFin arch).

(BTW.: when enumerating the ways how atomic macros are done I forgot to
mention the "new ARM" method: dedicated "load locked, store conditional"
operations that help simulating atomic behavior in user space without
the Kernel's help.)

-Michael