Re: PATCH? hrtimer_wakeup: fix a theoretical race wrtrt_mutex_slowlock()

From: Benjamin Herrenschmidt
Date: Mon Nov 06 2006 - 03:58:39 EST



> Yes. On x86 (and x86-64) you'll never see this, because writes are always
> seen in order regardless, and in addition, the spin_lock is actually
> totally serializing anyway. On most other architectures, the spin_lock
> will serialize all the writes too, but it's not guaranteed, so in theory
> you're right. I suspect no actual architecture will do this, but hey,
> when talking memory ordering, safe is a lot better than sorry.

PowerPC doesn't serialize the writes on spin_lock, only on spin_unlock.

(That is, previous writes can "leak" into the lock, but writes done
before the unlock can't leak out of the spinlock).

Now, I've just glanced at the thread, so I don't know if that's relevant
to the problems you guys are talking about :-)

Ben.


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