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Date:   Thu, 5 Jul 2018 10:57:28 -0400 (EDT)
From:   Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
To:     Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
cc:     Andrea Parri <andrea.parri@amarulasolutions.com>,
        LKMM Maintainers -- Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com>,
        Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>,
        David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>,
        Jade Alglave <j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk>,
        Luc Maranget <luc.maranget@inria.fr>,
        Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>,
        "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Kernel development list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        <dlustig@nvidia.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] tools/memory-model: Add write ordering by release-acquire
 and by locks
In-Reply-To: <20180705144656.GF14470@arm.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44L0.1807051051110.1697-100000@iolanthe.rowland.org>
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Will:

On Thu, 5 Jul 2018, Will Deacon wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 05, 2018 at 10:21:36AM -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
> > On Wed, 4 Jul 2018, Will Deacon wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jul 03, 2018 at 01:28:17PM -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
> > > > Would this be allowed if smp_load_acquire() was implemented with LDAPR?
> > > > If the answer is yes then we will have to remove the rfi-rel-acq and
> > > > rel-rf-acq-po relations from the memory model entirely.
> > > 
> > > I don't understand what you mean by "rfi-rel-acq-po", and I assume you mean
> > > rel-rfi-acq-po for the other? Sounds like I'm confused here.
> > 
> > "rfi-rel-acq" is the relation which was removed by the first of my two
> > patches (it is now back in business since Paul reverted the commits),
> > and "rel-rf-acq-po" is the relation that was introduced to replace it.
> 
> Sorry, yes, I realised this after I'd replied. Curious: but why do you name
> the relations this way around, as opposed to e.g. rel-rfi-acq? It's
> obviously up to you, but I just couldn't figure out what inspired the
> ordering.

I no longer remember the reason for naming "rfi-rel-acq" the way I did.  
As you say, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

The reason for "rel-rf-acq-po" instead of "rel-rfi-acq-po" was because 
the second of the two patches uses that relation in a context where the 
release and the acquire might very well run on different CPUs.

Alan

> > At any rate, it looks like instead of strengthening the relation, I
> > should write a patch that removes it entirely.  I also will add new,
> > stronger relations for use with locking, essentially making spin_lock
> > and spin_unlock be RCsc.
> 
> Thanks, Alan. I'll try to review them a bit more quickly this time, too.
> 
> Will