Surprising code generated for vdso_read_begin()

From: Christophe Leroy
Date: Thu Jan 09 2020 - 12:52:39 EST


Wondering why we get something so complicated/redundant for vdso_read_begin() <include/vdso/helpers.h>

static __always_inline u32 vdso_read_begin(const struct vdso_data *vd)
{
u32 seq;

while ((seq = READ_ONCE(vd->seq)) & 1)
cpu_relax();

smp_rmb();
return seq;
}


6e0: 81 05 00 f0 lwz r8,240(r5)
6e4: 71 09 00 01 andi. r9,r8,1
6e8: 41 82 00 10 beq 6f8 <__c_kernel_clock_gettime+0x158>
6ec: 81 05 00 f0 lwz r8,240(r5)
6f0: 71 0a 00 01 andi. r10,r8,1
6f4: 40 82 ff f8 bne 6ec <__c_kernel_clock_gettime+0x14c>
6f8:

r5 being vd pointer

Why the first triplet, not only the second triplet ? Something wrong with using READ_ONCE() for that ?

Christophe