Re: smp.c && barriers (Was: [PATCH 1/4] generic-smp: remove single ipi fallback for smp_call_function_many())

[Nick Piggin]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 01:20:31PM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> 
> * Suresh Siddha <suresh.b.siddha@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 2009-02-18 at 11:17 -0800, Ingo Molnar wrote: 
> > > * Suresh Siddha <suresh.b.siddha@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > So what should happen is to move that smp_mb() from the x86 
> > > generic IPI path to the x86 x2apic IPI path. (and turn it into 
> > > an smp_wmb() - that should be enough - we dont care about future 
> > > reads being done sooner than this point.)
> > 
> > Ingo, smp_wmb() won't help. x2apic register writes can still 
> > go ahead of the sfence. According to the SDM, we need a 
> > serializing instruction or mfence. Our internal experiments 
> > also proved this.
> 
> ah, yes - i got confused about how an x2apic write can pass a 
> _store_ fence.

And about how smp_wmb() doesn't emit a store fence ;)

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