Re: [RFC][PATCH v3]: documentation,atomic: Add new documents

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Mon Jul 31 2017 - 05:05:53 EST


On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 08:47:50PM +0800, Boqun Feng wrote:

> > +
> > +Further, while something like:
> > +
> > + smp_mb__before_atomic();
> > + atomic_dec(&X);
> > +
> > +is a 'typical' RELEASE pattern, the barrier is strictly stronger than
> > +a RELEASE. Similarly for something like:
> > +
>
> .. at here. Maybe you planned to put stronger ACQUIRE pattern?

Yes, although I struggled to find a sensible one. The problem is that
ACQUIRE is on loads and value returning atomics have an ACQUIRE variant,
so why would you ever want to use smp_mb__after_atomic() for this.


That is, the best I could come up with is something like:

val = atomic_fetch_or_relaxed(1, &var);
smp_mb__after_atomic();

But in that case we should've just written:

val = atomic_fetch_or_acquire(1, &var);


Suggestions?