[PATCH tip/core/rcu 1/5] documentation: Record limitations of bitfields and small variables

[Paul E. McKenney]

From: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

This commit documents the fact that it is not safe to use bitfields
as shared variables in synchronization algorithms.  It also documents
that CPUs must provide one-byte and two-byte normal load and store
instructions in order to be supported by the Linux kernel.  (Michael
Cree has agreed to the resulting non-support of pre-EV56 Alpha CPUs:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/9/5/143.)

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
 Documentation/memory-barriers.txt | 31 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 31 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
index 22a969cdd476..d6bc77eb179a 100644
--- a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
+++ b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
@@ -269,6 +269,37 @@ And there are a number of things that _must_ or _must_not_ be assumed:
 	STORE *(A + 4) = Y; STORE *A = X;
 	STORE {*A, *(A + 4) } = {X, Y};
 
+And there are anti-guarantees:
+
+ (*) These guarantees do not apply to bitfields, because compilers often
+     generate code to modify these using non-atomic read-modify-write
+     sequences.  Do not attempt to use bitfields to synchronize parallel
+     algorithms.
+
+ (*) Even in cases where bitfields are protected by locks, all fields
+     in a given bitfield must be protected by one lock.  If two fields
+     in a given bitfield are protected by different locks, the compiler's
+     non-atomic read-modify-write sequences can cause an update to one
+     field to corrupt the value of an adjacent field.
+
+ (*) These guarantees apply only to properly aligned and sized scalar
+     variables.  "Properly sized" currently means variables that are
+     the same size as "char", "short", "int" and "long".  "Properly
+     aligned" means the natural alignment, thus no constraints for
+     "char", two-byte alignment for "short", four-byte alignment for
+     "int", and either four-byte or eight-byte alignment for "long",
+     on 32-bit and 64-bit systems, respectively.  Note that this means
+     that the Linux kernel does not support pre-EV56 Alpha CPUs,
+     because these older CPUs do not provide one-byte and two-byte
+     load and store instructions.  (In theory, the pre-EV56 Alpha CPUs
+     can emulate these instructions using load-linked/store-conditional
+     instructions, but in practice this approach has excessive overhead.
+     Keep in mind that this emulation would be required on -all- single-
+     and double-byte loads and stores in order to handle adjacent bytes
+     protected by different locks.)
+
+     Alpha EV56 and later Alpha CPUs are still supported.
+
 
 =========================
 WHAT ARE MEMORY BARRIERS?
-- 
1.8.1.5

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