GCC libatomic ABI specification draft

[Gabriel Paubert]

On Thu, Dec 01, 2016 at 11:13:37AM -0800, Bin Fan at Work wrote:
> Hi Szabolcs,
> 
> > On Nov 29, 2016, at 3:11 AM, Szabolcs Nagy <szabolcs.nagy@arm.com> wrote:
> > 
> > On 17/11/16 20:12, Bin Fan wrote:
> >> 
> >> Although this ABI specification specifies that 16-byte properly aligned atomics are inlineable on platforms
> >> supporting cmpxchg16b, we document the caveats here for further discussion. If we decide to change the
> >> inlineable attribute for those atomics, then this ABI, the compiler and the runtime implementation should be
> >> updated together at the same time.
> >> 
> >> 
> >> The compiler and runtime need to check the availability of cmpxchg16b to implement this ABI specification.
> >> Here is how it would work: The compiler can get the information either from the compiler flags or by
> >> inquiring the hardware capabilities. When the information is not available, the compiler should assume that
> >> cmpxchg16b instruction is not supported. The runtime library implementation can also query the hardware
> >> compatibility and choose the implementation at runtime. Assuming the user provides correct compiler options
> > 
> > with this abi the runtime implementation *must* query the hardware
> > (because there might be inlined cmpxchg16b in use in another module
> > on a hardware that supports it and the runtime must be able to sync
> > with it).
> 
> Thanks for the comment. Yes, the ABI requires libatomic must query the hardware. This is 
> necessary if we want the compiler to generate inlined code for 16-byte atomics. Note that 
> this particular issue only affects x86. 

Why? Power (at least recent ones) has 128 bit atomic instructions
(lqarx/stqcx.) and Z has 128 bit compare and swap. 

    Gabriel