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Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 15:06:06 +1000
From: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
To: torvalds@transmeta.com (Linus Torvalds)
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [Lse-tech] Re: RFC: patch to allow lock-free traversal of lists with insertion
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On Wed, 10 Oct 2001 17:25:22 +0000 (UTC)
torvalds@transmeta.com (Linus Torvalds) wrote:

> Absolutely.  It's not that expensive an operation on sane hardware.  And
> it's definitely conceptually the only right thing to do - we're saying
> that we're doing a read that depends on a previous read having seen
> previous memory.  Ergo, "rmb()". 

Accessing pointer contents after you dereference the pointer is "obvious":
we've been trying to get Richard to understand the problem for FIVE MONTHS,
and he's not stupid!

The PPC manual (thanks Paul M) clearly indicates rmbdd() is not neccessary.
That they mention it explicitly suggests it's going to happen on more
architectures: you are correct, we should sprinkle rmbdd() everywhere
(rmb() is heavy on current PPC) and I'll update the Kernel Locking Guide now
the rules have changed.[1]

Rusty.
[1] Aren't we lucky our documentation is so sparse noone can accuse us of being
    inconsistent? 8)
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