Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 22:19:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
To: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
cc: virtualization@lists.osdl.org, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org>,
       akpm@osdl.org, xen-devel@lists.xensource.com,
       Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org>, Ian Pratt <ian.pratt@xensource.com>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [patch 2/8] Implement always-locked bit ops, for memory shared
 with an SMP hypervisor.
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 <Pine.LNX.4.64.0608022125320.26980@schroedinger.engr.sgi.com>
 <200608030649.11452.ak@suse.de>
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On Thu, 3 Aug 2006, Andi Kleen wrote:

> > Those operations are only needed for special xen driver and not for 
> > regular kernel code!
> 
> The Xen driver will be "regular" kernel code.

As far as I can tell from this conversation there are special "Xen" 
drivers that need this not the rest of the system.

> > for those special xen drivers.
> 
> Well there might be reasons someone else uses this in the future too.
> It's also not exactly Linux style - normally we try to add generic
> facilities.

What possible use could there be to someone else?

The "atomic" ops lock/unlock crap exists only for i386 as far as I can 
tell. As you said most architectures either always use atomic ops or 
never. The lock/unlock atomic ops are i386 specific material that 
better stay contained. Its arch specific and not generic.

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