Re: [PATCH 1/24] make atomic_read() behave consistently on alpha

[Segher Boessenkool]

> > > > The only safe way to get atomic accesses is to write
> > > > assembler code.  Are there any downsides to that?  I don't
> > > > see any.
> > >
> > > The assumption that aligned word reads and writes are atomic, and 
> > > that words are aligned unless explicitly packed otherwise, is 
> > > endemic in the kernel.  No sane compiler violates this assumption.  
> > > It's true that we're not portable to insane compilers after this 
> > > patch, but we never were in the first place.
> > You didn't answer my question: are there any downsides to using
> > explicit coded-in-assembler accesses for atomic accesses?  You
> > can handwave all you want that it should "just work" with
> > volatile accesses, but volatility != atomicity, volatile in C
> > is really badly defined, GCC never officially gave stronger
> > guarantees, and we have a bugzilla full of PRs to show what a
> > minefield it is.
> > So, why not use the well-defined alternative?
>
> Because we don't need to,

You don't need to use volatile objects, or accesses through
valatile-cast pointers, either.

> and it hurts performance.

Please show how it does this -- one load is one load either way,
and one store is one store.


Segher

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