linux/include
Nick Piggin 4827bbb06e i386: remove bogus comment about memory barrier
The comment being removed by this patch is incorrect and misleading.

In the following situation:

	1. load  ...
	2. store 1 -> X
	3. wmb
	4. rmb
	5. load  a <- Y
	6. store ...

4 will only ensure ordering of 1 with 5.
3 will only ensure ordering of 2 with 6.

Further, a CPU with strictly in-order stores will still only provide that
2 and 6 are ordered (effectively, it is the same as a weakly ordered CPU
with wmb after every store).

In all cases, 5 may still be executed before 2 is visible to other CPUs!

The additional piece of the puzzle that mb() provides is the store/load
ordering, which fundamentally cannot be achieved with any combination of
rmb()s and wmb()s.

This can be an unexpected result if one expected any sort of global ordering
guarantee to barriers (eg. that the barriers themselves are sequentially
consistent with other types of barriers).  However sfence or lfence barriers
need only provide an ordering partial ordering of memory operations -- Consider
that wmb may be implemented as nothing more than inserting a special barrier
entry in the store queue, or, in the case of x86, it can be a noop as the store
queue is in order. And an rmb may be implemented as a directive to prevent
subsequent loads only so long as their are no previous outstanding loads (while
there could be stores still in store queues).

I can actually see the occasional load/store being reordered around lfence on
my core2. That doesn't prove my above assertions, but it does show the comment
is wrong (unless my program is -- can send it out by request).

So:
   mb() and smp_mb() always have and always will require a full mfence
   or lock prefixed instruction on x86.  And we should remove this comment.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Paul McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
Cc: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-09-29 09:13:59 -07:00
..
acpi ACPI: CONFIG_ACPI_SLEEP=n power off regression in 2.6.23-rc8 (NOT in rc7) 2007-09-25 17:58:52 -04:00
asm-alpha Fix Alpha O_CLOEXEC definition 2007-08-09 08:39:22 -07:00
asm-arm Merge branch 'omap-fixes' of master.kernel.org:/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tmlind/linux-omap-2.6 2007-08-25 12:38:47 +01:00
asm-avr32 [AVR32] Define mmiowb() 2007-08-15 16:36:56 +02:00
asm-blackfin Blackfin arch: fix some bugs in lib/string.h functions found by our string testing modules 2007-09-12 16:30:15 +08:00
asm-cris remove unused TIF_NOTIFY_RESUME flag 2007-07-31 15:39:38 -07:00
asm-frv FRV: connect up fallocate 2007-08-11 15:47:40 -07:00
asm-generic Define termios_1 functions for powerpc, s390, avr32 and frv 2007-09-12 09:08:05 -07:00
asm-h8300 remove unused TIF_NOTIFY_RESUME flag 2007-07-31 15:39:38 -07:00
asm-i386 i386: remove bogus comment about memory barrier 2007-09-29 09:13:59 -07:00
asm-ia64 [IA64] Cleanup HPSIM code (was: Re: Enable early console for Ski simulator) 2007-09-01 02:52:25 -07:00
asm-m32r m32r: Rename STI/CLI macros 2007-09-06 11:10:56 +09:00
asm-m68k m68k(nommu): add missing syscalls 2007-09-11 17:21:20 -07:00
asm-m68knommu m68k(nommu): add missing syscalls 2007-09-11 17:21:20 -07:00
asm-mips [MIPS] Fix CONFIG_BUILD_ELF64 kernels with symbols in CKSEG0. 2007-09-27 23:19:16 +01:00
asm-parisc [PARISC] Add dummy isa_(bus|virt)_to_(virt|bus) inlines 2007-08-27 00:29:22 -04:00
asm-powerpc [POWERPC] Fix timekeeping on PowerPC 601 2007-09-19 15:26:34 +10:00
asm-ppc [WATCHDOG] mv64x60_wdt: Add arch/powerpc platform support 2007-07-24 21:16:02 +00:00
asm-s390 [S390] Change atomic_read/set to inline functions with barrier semantics. 2007-08-22 13:51:49 +02:00
asm-sh sh: Add missing dma_sync_single_range_for_*(). 2007-08-10 02:37:01 +09:00
asm-sh64 sh64: Add missing dma_sync_single_for_*(). 2007-08-10 02:47:31 +09:00
asm-sparc [SPARC32]: Make flush_tlb_kernel_range() an inline function. 2007-08-26 18:49:12 -07:00
asm-sparc64 [SPARC64]: Fix lockdep, particularly on SMP. 2007-09-16 11:51:15 -07:00
asm-um UML: Fix ELF_CORE_COPY_REGS build botch 2007-09-10 18:58:05 -07:00
asm-v850 remove unused TIF_NOTIFY_RESUME flag 2007-07-31 15:39:38 -07:00
asm-x86_64 Revert "x86-64: Disable local APIC timer use on AMD systems with C1E" 2007-09-26 15:43:41 -07:00
asm-xtensa [patch 1/2] Xtensa: enable arbitary tty speed setting ioctls 2007-08-27 13:54:25 -07:00
crypto
keys
linux Revert "[PATCH] x86-64: fix x86_64-mm-sched-clock-share" 2007-09-26 15:52:17 -07:00
math-emu Fix <math-emu/soft-fp.h> tpyo 2007-08-18 17:15:17 -07:00
media V4L/DVB (6220a): fix build error for et61x251 driver 2007-09-14 13:39:12 -03:00
mtd UBI: kill homegrown endian macros 2007-07-18 16:53:49 +03:00
net [TCP]: Fix MD5 signature handling on big-endian. 2007-09-28 15:18:35 -07:00
pcmcia
rdma IB: Move the macro IB_UMEM_MAX_PAGE_CHUNK() to umem.c 2007-08-03 10:45:18 -07:00
rxrpc
scsi [SCSI] libiscsi: sync up iscsi and scsi eh's access to the connection 2007-08-15 13:09:21 -05:00
sound [ALSA] version 1.0.14 2007-07-20 11:13:35 +02:00
video remove tx3912fb 2007-07-31 15:39:41 -07:00
xen xen: xen/page.h compile fix 2007-07-26 11:35:16 -07:00
Kbuild