Re: [PATCH] docs/memory-barriers.txt: Fix broken DMA vs MMIO ordering example
From: Paul E. McKenney
Date: Tue Mar 27 2018 - 11:02:14 EST
On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 02:11:27PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> The section of memory-barriers.txt that describes the dma_Xmb() barriers
> has an incorrect example claiming that a wmb() is required after writing
> to coherent memory in order for those writes to be visible to a device
> before a subsequent MMIO access using writel() can reach the device.
>
> In fact, this ordering guarantee is provided (at significant cost on some
> architectures such as arm and power) by writel, so the wmb() is not
> necessary. writel_relaxed exists for cases where this ordering is not
> required.
>
> Fix the example and update the text to make this clearer.
>
> Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@xxxxxxxx>
> Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@xxxxxxx>
> Reported-by: Sinan Kaya <okaya@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@xxxxxxx>
Good catch, queued on my lkmm branch, thank you!
Thanx, Paul
> ---
> Documentation/memory-barriers.txt | 17 +++++++++--------
> 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
> index a863009849a3..3247547d1c36 100644
> --- a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
> @@ -1909,9 +1909,6 @@ There are some more advanced barrier functions:
> /* assign ownership */
> desc->status = DEVICE_OWN;
>
> - /* force memory to sync before notifying device via MMIO */
> - wmb();
> -
> /* notify device of new descriptors */
> writel(DESC_NOTIFY, doorbell);
> }
> @@ -1919,11 +1916,15 @@ There are some more advanced barrier functions:
> The dma_rmb() allows us guarantee the device has released ownership
> before we read the data from the descriptor, and the dma_wmb() allows
> us to guarantee the data is written to the descriptor before the device
> - can see it now has ownership. The wmb() is needed to guarantee that the
> - cache coherent memory writes have completed before attempting a write to
> - the cache incoherent MMIO region.
> -
> - See Documentation/DMA-API.txt for more information on consistent memory.
> + can see it now has ownership. Note that, when using writel(), a prior
> + wmb() is not needed to guarantee that the cache coherent memory writes
> + have completed before writing to the MMIO region. The cheaper
> + writel_relaxed() does not provide this guarantee and must not be used
> + here.
> +
> + See the subsection "Kernel I/O barrier effects" for more information on
> + relaxed I/O accessors and the Documentation/DMA-API.txt file for more
> + information on consistent memory.
>
>
> MMIO WRITE BARRIER
> --
> 2.1.4
>