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Re: [RFC][PATCH 0/5] arch: atomic rework
- From: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck at linux dot vnet dot ibm dot com>
- To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds at linux-foundation dot org>
- Cc: Torvald Riegel <triegel at redhat dot com>, Will Deacon <will dot deacon at arm dot com>, Peter Zijlstra <peterz at infradead dot org>, Ramana Radhakrishnan <Ramana dot Radhakrishnan at arm dot com>, David Howells <dhowells at redhat dot com>, "linux-arch at vger dot kernel dot org" <linux-arch at vger dot kernel dot org>, "linux-kernel at vger dot kernel dot org" <linux-kernel at vger dot kernel dot org>, "akpm at linux-foundation dot org" <akpm at linux-foundation dot org>, "mingo at kernel dot org" <mingo at kernel dot org>, "gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org" <gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2014 17:26:36 -0800
- Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH 0/5] arch: atomic rework
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- Reply-to: paulmck at linux dot vnet dot ibm dot com
On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 04:18:52PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 3:41 PM, Torvald Riegel <triegel@redhat.com> wrote:
> >
> > There's an underlying problem here that's independent from the actual
> > instance that you're worried about here: "no sense" is a ultimately a
> > matter of taste/objectives/priorities as long as the respective
> > specification is logically consistent.
>
> Yes. But I don't think it's "independent".
>
> Exactly *because* some people will read standards without applying
> "does the resulting code generation actually make sense for the
> programmer that wrote the code", the standard has to be pretty clear.
>
> The standard often *isn't* pretty clear. It wasn't clear enough when
> it came to "volatile", and yet that was a *much* simpler concept than
> atomic accesses and memory ordering.
>
> And most of the time it's not a big deal. But because the C standard
> generally tries to be very portable, and cover different machines,
> there tends to be a mindset that anything inherently unportable is
> "undefined" or "implementation defined", and then the compiler writer
> is basically given free reign to do anything they want (with
> "implementation defined" at least requiring that it is reliably the
> same thing).
>
> And when it comes to memory ordering, *everything* is basically
> non-portable, because different CPU's very much have different rules.
> I worry that that means that the standard then takes the stance that
> "well, compiler re-ordering is no worse than CPU re-ordering, so we
> let the compiler do anything". And then we have to either add
> "volatile" to make sure the compiler doesn't do that, or use an overly
> strict memory model at the compiler level that makes it all pointless.
For whatever it is worth, this line of reasoning has been one reason why
I have been objecting strenuously every time someone on the committee
suggests eliminating "volatile" from the standard.
Thanx, Paul
> So I really really hope that the standard doesn't give compiler
> writers free hands to do anything that they can prove is "equivalent"
> in the virtual C machine model. That's not how you get reliable
> results.
>
> Linus
>