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To:     Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
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From:   Logan Gunthorpe <logang@deltatee.com>
Message-ID: <726eb143-2cca-b221-b569-e193a962e357@deltatee.com>
Date:   Mon, 26 Mar 2018 10:21:43 -0600
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Subject: Re: [PATCH v13 01/10] iomap: Use correct endian conversion function
 in mmio_writeXXbe
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On 26/03/18 04:53 AM, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On most architectures, this is not important:
> - For x86, the stores are aways atomic and no additional barriers
>   are needed, so the two are the same
> - For ARM (both 32 and 64-bit), powerpc and many others, we don't
>   use the generic iowrite() and just fall back to writel() or
>   writel(swab32()).
> 
> However, shouldn't we just use the writel(swab32()) logic here as well
> for the common case rather than risking missing barriers?

Hmm, I don't know... it's complicated?

Doing a bit of digging shows that the existing code was written during a
time when writel() did not include extra barriers over __raw_writel() in
any of the common arches.

The commit logs don't seem to provide any guidance as to why this it was
done this way, but I'd assume it was done to avoid a double swab() call
on BE arches. Seeing writel() is typically implemented as:

__raw_writel(__cpu_to_le32(value), addr);

Then on BE arches, writel(swab32()) would become:

__raw_writel(swab32(swab32(value)), addr)

Which seems undesirable.

Logan