Re: arch/x86/Kconfig selects invalid HAVE_READQ, HAVE_WRITEQ vars

From: Roland Dreier
Date: Sun Apr 19 2009 - 17:12:21 EST


> from arch/x86/Kconfig:
> ...
> select HAVE_READQ
> select HAVE_WRITEQ
> ...
>
> yet there are no such defined Kconfig vars anywhere. thoughts?

git blame shows that this came in from 2c5643b1 ("x86: provide
readq()/writeq() on 32-bit too"). And that commit looks very dubious
indeed to me -- it defines readq() and writeq() in a way that is not
atomic and probably won't generate single 64-bit bus cycles.

Now, many drivers do "#ifndef readq <define my own implementation> #endif"
but exactly what is required is very hardware-dependent, and accessing
32-bit halves in the wrong order may lead to very subtle bugs. For
example, the changelog for e23a59e1 ("niu: Fix readq implementation when
architecture does not provide one.") says:

In particular one of the issues is whether the top 32-bits
or the bottom 32-bits of the 64-bit register should be read
first. There could be side effects, and in fact that is
exactly the problem here.

By coincidence, the 32-bit x86 implementation is actually OK for niu,
but I didn't audit every similar driver, and I don't think any
implementation of readq()/writeq() that generates multiple bus cycles is
suitable in general -- it doesn't meet the requirements of the API.

So I would strongly suggest reverting 2c5643b1 since as far as I can
tell it just sets a trap for subtle bugs that only show up on 32-bit
x86 -- any portable driver still needs to provide readq()/writeq() for
other 32-bit architectures, so it doesn't really help anyone.

- R.
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