[PATCH] Another couple of alterations to the memory barrier doc

[David Howells]

The attached patch makes another couple of alterations to the memory barrier
document following suggestions by Alan Stern and in co-operation with Paul
McKenney:

 (*) Rework the point of introduction of memory barriers and the description
     of what they are to reiterate why they're needed.

 (*) Modify a statement about the use of data dependency barriers to note that
     other barriers can be used instead (as they imply DD-barriers).

Signed-Off-By: David Howells <dhowells@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
warthog>diffstat -p1 /tmp/mb.diff 
 Documentation/memory-barriers.txt |   15 ++++++++++-----
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
index 4710845..cc53f47 100644
--- a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
+++ b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
@@ -262,9 +262,14 @@ What is required is some way of interven
 CPU to restrict the order.
 
 Memory barriers are such interventions.  They impose a perceived partial
-ordering between the memory operations specified on either side of the barrier.
-They request that the sequence of memory events generated appears to other
-parts of the system as if the barrier is effective on that CPU.
+ordering over the memory operations on either side of the barrier.
+
+Such enforcement is important because the CPUs and other devices in a system
+can use a variety of tricks to improve performance - including reordering,
+deferral and combination of memory operations; speculative loads; speculative
+branch prediction and various types of caching.  Memory barriers are used to
+override or suppress these tricks, allowing the code to sanely control the
+interaction of multiple CPUs and/or devices.
 
 
 VARIETIES OF MEMORY BARRIER
@@ -461,8 +466,8 @@ Whilst this may seem like a failure of c
 isn't, and this behaviour can be observed on certain real CPUs (such as the DEC
 Alpha).
 
-To deal with this, a data dependency barrier must be inserted between the
-address load and the data load:
+To deal with this, a data dependency barrier or better must be inserted
+between the address load and the data load:
 
 	CPU 1		CPU 2
 	===============	===============
-
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