2006-11-25 21:18:36

by Oleg Nesterov

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Subject: atomic_add_unless() and mb()

Both Documentation/memory-barriers.txt and Documentation/atomic_ops.txt state
that atomic_add_unless() implies smp_mb() on each side of the operation.

Is it true?

include/asm-most_of/atomic.h:

#define atomic_add_unless(v, a, u) \
({ \
int c, old; \
c = atomic_read(v); \
for (;;) { \
if (unlikely(c == (u))) \
break; \
old = atomic_cmpxchg((v), c, c + (a)); \
if (likely(old == c)) \
break; \
c = old; \
} \
c != (u); \
})

This looks like atomic_add_unless() implies mb() only if it returns 1.
Otherwise it could fail (return 0) before the first atomic_cmpxchg(),
but atomic_read() provides a compiler barrier only.

Could you clarify?

Oleg.