Re: [RFC v2 3/7] powerpc: atomic: Implement atomic{,64}_{add,sub}_return_* variants

[Boqun Feng]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 11:24:27PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> Hi Boqun,
> 
> On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 09:23:03AM +0100, Boqun Feng wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 11:33:10PM +0800, Boqun Feng wrote:
> > > On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 05:59:02PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 04:49:31PM +0100, Boqun Feng wrote:
> > > > > On powerpc, we don't need a general memory barrier to achieve acquire and
> > > > > release semantics, so __atomic_op_{acquire,release} can be implemented
> > > > > using "lwsync" and "isync".
> > > > 
> > > > I'm assuming isync+ctrl isn't transitive, so we need to get to the bottom
> > > 
> > > Actually the transitivity is still guaranteed here, I think ;-)
> 
> The litmus test I'm thinking of is:
> 
> 
> {
> 0:r2=x;
> 1:r2=x; 1:r5=z;
> 2:r2=z; 2:r4=x;
> }
>  P0           | P1            | P2           ;
>  li r1,1      | lwz r1,0(r2)  | lwz r1,0(r2) ;
>  stw r1,0(r2) | cmpw r1,r1    | cmpw r1,r1   ;
>               | beq LC00      | beq  LC01    ;
>               | LC00:         | LC01:        ;
>               | isync         | isync        ;
>               | li r4,1       | lwz r3,0(r4) ;
>               | stw r4,0(r5)  |              ;
> exists
> (1:r1=1 /\ 2:r1=1 /\ 2:r3=0)
> 
> 
> Which appears to be allowed. I don't think you need to worry about backwards
> branches for the ctrl+isync construction (none of the current example do,
> afaict).
> 

Yes.. my care of backwards branches is not quite related to the topic, I
concerned that mostly because my test is using atomic operation, and I
just want to test the exact asm code.

> Anyway, all the problematic cases seem to arise when we start mixing
> ACQUIRE/RELEASE accesses with relaxed accesses (i.e. where an access from
> one group reads from an access in the other group). It would be simplest
> to say that this doesn't provide any transitivity guarantees, and that
> an ACQUIRE must always read from a RELEASE if transitivity is required.
> 

Agreed. RELEASE alone doesn't provide transitivity and transitivity is
guaranteed only if an ACQUIRE read from a RELEASE. That's exactly the
direction which the link (https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/9/15/836) is
heading to. So I think we are fine here to use ctrl+isync here, right?

Regards,
Boqun

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