Re: [PATCH for-3.3] mempool: clean up and document synchronizationand memory barrier usage

From: Tejun Heo
Date: Wed Dec 21 2011 - 13:52:43 EST


Hello,

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 06:40:58PM +0100, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> > The first paragraph is saying that at that point full barrier (for
> > both stores and loads) is necessary at that point and the second
> > paragraph is a bit confusing but the last sentence seems to say that
> > only loads after the unlock can creep above unlock,
>
> Probably, this is because the comment tries to explain the possible
> reordering with the subsequent "if (condition)" check, so it only
> mentions loads.

Ah, I see.

> > Anyways, yeah, you're right. We need a smp_wmb() before returning but
> > I think the comment on top of prepare_to_wait() is misleading.
>
> Hmm. I am not sure I understand... Although almost everything written
> in English looks misleading to me ;)

Amen. :) I missed the context there, so please forget about it.

> > Great, thanks. I'll wait a bit for futher comments and repost w/
> > smp_wmb() added.
>
> Well. This is almost off-topic, but perhaps we can add
> smp_mb__after_unlock() ? We already have smp_mb__after_lock.
> Afaics prepare_to_wait() could use it.
>
> I am not talking about perfomance issues, just I think the code
> will be more understandable.

Hmmm... maybe. I really don't know.

Thanks.

--
tejun
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