Re: [PATCH 6/24] make atomic_read() behave consistently on frv

From: Arnd Bergmann
Date: Wed Aug 15 2007 - 10:52:29 EST


On Wednesday 15 August 2007, Paul E. McKenney wrote:

> ACCESS_ONCE() is indeed intended to be used when actually loading or
> storing the variable. That said, I must admit that it is not clear to me
> why you would want to add an extra order() rather than ACCESS_ONCE()ing
> one or both of the adjacent accesses to that same variable.
>
> So, what am I missing?

You're probably right, the only case I can construct is something like

if (ACCESS_ONCE(x)) {
...
ACCESS_ONCE(x)++;
}

which would be slightly less efficient than

if (x)
x++;
order(x);

because in the first case, you need to do two ordered accesses
but only one in the second case. However, I can't think of a case
where this actually makes a noticable difference in real life.

Arnd <><
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/