Re: spin_lock forgets to clobber memory and other smp fixes [wasRe: [patch] waitqueue optimization, 2.4.0-test7]

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds at transmeta dot com>]

On Thu, 7 Sep 2000, Jamie Lokier wrote:
> 
> ps. There is a _clobber_ for memory, but no way to say "this asm _reads_
> arbitrary memory".  __volatile__ may be filling that role though.

Nope. "memory" fills that role too. Remember: "memory" doesn't actually
say "this clobbers all memory". That would be silly: an asm that just
wipes all memory would not be a very useful asm (or rather, it would have
just _one_ use: "execve()"). So "memory" really says that the asm clobbers
_some_ memory.

Which in turn means that the code scheduler has to synchronize all memory
accesses around it - as if the asm was reading all memory. Because if the
scheduler would move a store to after the asm, it would give the wrong
results if the asm happened to clobber _that_ memory. And the scheduler
obviously cannot just drop the store ("Oh, the asm will clobber this
anyway"), because it doesn't know which memory regions get clobbered.

Now, the fact that the "memory" clobber also seems to clobber local
variables is a bug, I think. Or at least a misfeature. It should not be
considered to clobber reloads, as those are really in "registers" - at
least as far as the asm is concerned (the compiler could have chosen to
just allocate a hard register to that local variable or argument).

		Linus