In article <20010903.152443.59467554.davem@redhat.com>,
David S. Miller <davem@redhat.com> wrote:
>
>Oh thats different! That won't even work %100 correctly on x86. On
>x86 it will "execute", but it won't be atomic.
Actually, it will. Intel definitely discourages it, but they'll lock
both cache-lines if the access is unaligned and crosses. So while they
encourage natural alignment for atomic accesses, I think they also
guarantee that they always work - it ends up being only a performance
issue.
I agree that it is bad practice, though, and I bet that the x86 is one
of the very few architectures that _will_ do this naturally.
Linus
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Sep 07 2001 - 21:00:44 EST