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SubjectRe: [patch 00/21] mutex subsystem, -V14

* Joel Schopp <jschopp@austin.ibm.com> wrote:

> Took a glance at this on ppc64. Would it be useful if I contributed
> an arch specific version like arm has? We'll either need an arch
> specific version or have the generic changed.

feel free to implement an assembly mutex fastpath, and it would
certainly be welcome and useful - but i think you are wrong about SMP
synchronization:

> Anyway, here is some disassembly of some of the code generated with my
> comments:
>
> c00000000049bf9c <.mutex_lock>:
> c00000000049bf9c: 7c 00 06 ac eieio
> c00000000049bfa0: 7d 20 18 28 lwarx r9,r0,r3
> c00000000049bfa4: 31 29 ff ff addic r9,r9,-1

> The eieio is completly unnecessary, it got picked up from
> atomic_dec_return (Anton, why is there an eieio at the start of
> atomic_dec_return in the first place?).

a mutex is like a spinlock, it must prevent loads and stores within the
critical section from 'leaking outside the critical section' [they must
not be reordered to before the mutex_lock(), nor to after the
mutex_unlock()] - hence the barriers added by atomic_dec_return() are
very much needed.

Ingo
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