Re: Compilers and RCU readers: Once more unto the breach!

From: Ramana Radhakrishnan
Date: Wed May 20 2015 - 10:15:55 EST




On 20/05/15 15:03, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 02:44:30PM +0100, Ramana Radhakrishnan wrote:


On 20/05/15 14:37, David Howells wrote:
Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I was thinking of "y" as a simple variable, but if it is something more
complex, then the compiler could do this, right?

char *x;

y;
x = z;

Yeah. I presume it has to maintain the ordering, though.

The scheduler for e.g. is free to reorder if it can prove there is
no dependence (or indeed side-effects for y) between insns produced
for y and `x = z'.

So for example, if y is independent of z, the compiler can do the
following:

char *x;

x = z;
y;

But the dependency ordering is still maintained from z to x, so this
is not a problem.


Well, reads if any of x (assuming x was initialized elsewhere) would need to happen before x got assigned to z.

I understood the original "maintain the ordering" as between the statements `x = z' and `y'.



Or am I missing something subtle here?

No, it sounds like we are on the same page here.

regards
Ramana


Thanx, Paul

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