Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2015 13:52:44 +0200
From: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>
To: David Vrabel <david.vrabel@citrix.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>, Jason Wang <jasowang@redhat.com>,
        Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>, qemu-devel@nongnu.org,
        Alexander Duyck <alexander.duyck@gmail.com>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org,
        Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>,
        virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org,
        Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@citrix.com>
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] new barrier type for paravirt (was Re: [PATCH]
 virtio_ring: use smp_store_mb)
Message-ID: <20151221134325-mutt-send-email-mst@redhat.com>
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On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 10:47:49AM +0000, David Vrabel wrote:
> On 20/12/15 09:25, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > 
> > I noticed that drivers/xen/xenbus/xenbus_comms.c uses
> > full memory barriers to communicate with the other side.
> > For example:
> > 
> >                 /* Must write data /after/ reading the consumer index.  * */
> >                 mb();
> > 
> >                 memcpy(dst, data, avail);
> >                 data += avail;
> >                 len -= avail;
> >         
> >                 /* Other side must not see new producer until data is * there. */
> >                 wmb();
> >                 intf->req_prod += avail;
> >                 
> >                 /* Implies mb(): other side will see the updated producer. */
> >                 notify_remote_via_evtchn(xen_store_evtchn);
> > 
> > To me, it looks like for guests compiled with CONFIG_SMP, smp_wmb and smp_mb
> > would be sufficient, so mb() and wmb() here are only needed if
> > a non-SMP guest runs on an SMP host.
> > 
> > Is my analysis correct?
> 
> For x86, yes.
> 
> For arm/arm64 I think so, but would prefer one of the Xen arm
> maintainers to confirm.  In particular, whether inner-shareable barriers
> are sufficient for memory shared with the hypervisor.
> 
> > So what I'm suggesting is something like the below patch,
> > except instead of using virtio directly, a new set of barriers
> > that behaves identically for SMP and non-SMP guests will be introduced.
> > 
> > And of course the weak barriers flag is not needed for Xen -
> > that's a virtio only thing.
> > 
> > For example:
> > 
> > smp_pv_wmb()
> > smp_pv_rmb()
> > smp_pv_mb()
> 
> The smp_ prefix doesn't make a lot of sense to me here since these
> barriers are going to be the same whether the kernel is SMP or not.
> 
> David

Guest kernel - yes. But it's only needed because you
are running on an SMP host.

-- 
MST
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