Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:20:31 +0100 | From | Ingo Molnar <> | Subject | Re: smp.c && barriers (Was: [PATCH 1/4] generic-smp: remove single ipi fallback for smp_call_function_many()) |
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* Suresh Siddha <suresh.b.siddha@intel.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-02-18 at 11:17 -0800, Ingo Molnar wrote: > > * Suresh Siddha <suresh.b.siddha@intel.com> wrote: > > > > > > Indeed that could cause problems on some architectures which I > > > > had hoped to avoid. So the patch is probably better off to first > > > > add the smp_mb() to arch_send_call_function_xxx arch code, unless > > > > it is immediately obvious or confirmed by arch maintainer that > > > > such barrier is not required. > > > > > > For x2apic specific operations we should add the smp_mb() sequence. But > > > we need to make sure that we don't end up doing it twice (once in > > > generic code and another in arch code) for all the ipi paths. > > > > right now we do have an smp_mb() due to your fix in November. > > > > So what should happen is to move that smp_mb() from the x86 > > generic IPI path to the x86 x2apic IPI path. (and turn it into > > an smp_wmb() - that should be enough - we dont care about future > > reads being done sooner than this point.) > > Ingo, smp_wmb() won't help. x2apic register writes can still > go ahead of the sfence. According to the SDM, we need a > serializing instruction or mfence. Our internal experiments > also proved this.
ah, yes - i got confused about how an x2apic write can pass a _store_ fence.
The reason is that an MSR write is a register->register move (not a memory write), so it it not part of the generic memory ordering machinery. So a serializing instruction it has to be.
> Appended is the x86 portion of the patch: --- > > From: Suresh Siddha <suresh.b.siddha@intel.com> > Subject: x86: move smp_mb() in x86 flush tlb path to x2apic specific IPI > paths
Could you please refresh this patch to latest tip:master? The APIC drivers moved to arch/x86/kernel/apic/.
Ingo
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