Re: single copy atomicity for double load/stores on 32-bit systems

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

Hi Paul,

On Thu, Jun 6, 2019 at 11:43 AM Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 04, 2019 at 09:41:04AM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 10:14 PM Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jun 03, 2019 at 06:08:35PM +0000, Vineet Gupta wrote:
> > > > On 5/31/19 1:21 AM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > > > >> I'm not sure how to interpret "natural alignment" for the case of double
> > > > >> load/stores on 32-bit systems where the hardware and ABI allow for 4 byte
> > > > >> alignment (ARCv2 LDD/STD, ARM LDRD/STRD ....)
> > > > > Natural alignment: !((uintptr_t)ptr % sizeof(*ptr))
> > > > >
> > > > > For any u64 type, that would give 8 byte alignment. the problem
> > > > > otherwise being that your data spans two lines/pages etc..
> > > >
> > > > Sure, but as Paul said, if the software doesn't expect them to be atomic by
> > > > default, they could span 2 hardware lines to keep the implementation simpler/sane.
> > >
> > > I could imagine 8-byte types being only four-byte aligned on 32-bit systems,
> > > but it would be quite a surprise on 64-bit systems.
> >
> > Or two-byte aligned?
> >
> > M68k started with a 16-bit data bus, and alignment rules were retained
> > when gaining a wider data bus.
> >
> > BTW, do any platforms have issues with atomicity of 4-byte types on
> > 16-bit data buses? I believe some embedded ARM or PowerPC do have
> > such buses.
>
> But m68k is !SMP-only, correct?  If so, the only issues would be

M68k support in Linux is uniprocessor-only.

> interactions with interrupt handlers and the like, and doesn't current
> m68k hardware use exact interrupts?  Or is it still possible to interrupt
> an m68k in the middle of an instruction like it was in the bad old days?

TBH, I don't know.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

-- 
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds