Re: [PATCH v3 0/2] riscv: support CPUs with Zalrsc but not Zaamo

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2026 at 11:20:01AM +0200, Vladimir Kondratiev wrote:
> RISC-V split the A extension into Zaamo (AMO*.w/AMO*.d) and Zalrsc
> (LR/SC). Linux has so far required the whole A extension.
> 
> MIPS P8700 [1] implements only Zalrsc. AMO instructions are emulated by a
> trap into SBI. I measured typical userspace atomics on this CPU: an
> LR/SC atomic takes about 40 cycles, an AMO atomic about 600. The same
> ratio applies to kernel refcounts, bitops, xchg and futexes, so the
> kernel needs to emit LR/SC when Zaamo is not implemented.
> 
> Mobileye is going to use the "eyeq7h" platform, built on this CPU, for
> ADAS and autonomous driving. Kernel atomics are on the scheduling,
> memory-management and driver paths of that product, so the emulated
> AMO cost is not acceptable there.
> 
> This series keeps today's default: both extensions on, -march still
> contains "a", generated code is unchanged. Turning Zaamo off is a
> NONPORTABLE choice. The resulting kernel matches one -march, which
> userspace has to use as well, so a runtime alternative would not
> produce a portable image.
> 
> Zalrsc stays mandatory. cmpxchg, conditional atomics and futex CAS are
> already LR/SC sequences; Zaamo cannot replace them. BPF atomic ops
> still emit AMO and remain unsupported on a Zalrsc-only kernel.

The comment with RISCV_QUEUED_SPINLOCKS state that Zalrsc requires that
cmpxchg() loops have forward progress; which is much stronger than the
typical LL/SC implementation.

Does this MIPS thing indeed provide this?