Re: Do we need to correct barriering in circular-buffers.rst?

[Andrea Parri]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 04:49:31PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 02:59:06PM +0100, David Howells wrote:
> 
> > But I don't agree with this.  You're missing half the barriers.  There should
> > be *four* barriers.  The document mandates only 3 barriers, and uses
> > READ_ONCE() where the fourth should be, i.e.:
> > 
> >    thread #1            thread #2
> > 
> >                         smp_load_acquire(head)
> >                         ... read data from queue ..
> >                         smp_store_release(tail)
> > 
> >    READ_ONCE(tail)
> >    ... add data to queue ..
> >    smp_store_release(head)
> > 
> 
> Notably your READ_ONCE() pseudo code is lacking a conditional;
> kernel/events/ring_buffer.c writes it like so:
> 
>  *   kernel                             user
>  *
>  *   if (LOAD ->data_tail) {            LOAD ->data_head
>  *                      (A)             smp_rmb()       (C)
>  *      STORE $data                     LOAD $data
>  *      smp_wmb()       (B)             smp_mb()        (D)
>  *      STORE ->data_head               STORE ->data_tail
>  *   }
>  *
>  * Where A pairs with D, and B pairs with C.
>  *
>  * In our case (A) is a control dependency that separates the load of
>  * the ->data_tail and the stores of $data. In case ->data_tail
>  * indicates there is no room in the buffer to store $data we do not.

To elaborate on this, dependencies are tricky...  ;-)

For the record, the LKMM doesn't currently model "order" derived from
control dependencies to a _plain_ access (even if the plain access is
a write): in particular, the following is racy (as far as the current
LKMM is concerned):

C rb

{ }

P0(int *tail, int *data, int *head)
{
	if (READ_ONCE(*tail)) {
		*data = 1;
		smp_wmb();
		WRITE_ONCE(*head, 1);
	}
}

P1(int *tail, int *data, int *head)
{
	int r0;
	int r1;

	r0 = READ_ONCE(*head);
	smp_rmb();
	r1 = *data;
	smp_mb();
	WRITE_ONCE(*tail, 1);
}

Replacing the plain "*data = 1" with "WRITE_ONCE(*data, 1)" (or doing
s/READ_ONCE(*tail)/smp_load_acquire(tail)) suffices to avoid the race.
Maybe I'm short of imagination this morning...  but I can't currently
see how the compiler could "break" the above scenario.

I also didn't spend much time thinking about it.  memory-barriers.txt
has a section "CONTROL DEPENDENCIES" dedicated to "alerting developers
using control dependencies for ordering".  That's quite a long section
(and probably still incomplete); the last paragraph summarizes:  ;-)

(*) Compilers do not understand control dependencies.  It is therefore
    your job to ensure that they do not break your code.

  Andrea


>  *
>  * D needs to be a full barrier since it separates the data READ
>  * from the tail WRITE.
>  *
>  * For B a WMB is sufficient since it separates two WRITEs, and for C
>  * an RMB is sufficient since it separates two READs.
> 
> Where 'kernel' is the producer and 'user' is the consumer. This was
> written before load-acquire and store-release came about (I _think_),
> and I've so far resisted updating B to store-release because smp_wmb()
> is actually cheaper than store-release on a number of architectures
> (notably ARM).
> 
> C ought to be a load-aquire, and D really should be a store-release, but
> I don't think the perf userspace has that (or uses C11).