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Date:   Mon, 7 Jun 2021 13:16:33 -0700
From:   "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@kernel.org>
To:     Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
Cc:     Segher Boessenkool <segher@kernel.crashing.org>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>,
        Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@gmail.com>,
        Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>,
        Nick Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>,
        David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>,
        Jade Alglave <j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk>,
        Luc Maranget <luc.maranget@inria.fr>,
        Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        linux-toolchains@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-arch <linux-arch@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC] LKMM: Add volatile_if()
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On Mon, Jun 07, 2021 at 03:51:44PM -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 07, 2021 at 01:23:35PM -0500, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 07, 2021 at 08:27:12AM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > > > > > > The barrier() thing can work - all we need to do is to simply make it
> > > > > > > impossible for gcc to validly create anything but a conditional
> > > > > > > branch.
> > 
> > > > > What would you suggest as a way of instructing the compiler to emit the
> > > > > conditional branch that we are looking for?
> > > > 
> > > > You write it in the assembler code.
> > > > 
> > > > Yes, it sucks.  But it is the only way to get a branch if you really
> > > > want one.  Now, you do not really need one here anyway, so there may be
> > > > some other way to satisfy the actual requirements.
> > > 
> > > Hmmm...  What do you see Peter asking for that is different than what
> > > I am asking for?  ;-)
> > 
> > I don't know what you are referring to, sorry?
> > 
> > I know what you asked for: literally some way to tell the compiler to
> > emit a conditional branch.  If that is what you want, the only way to
> > make sure that is what you get is by writing exactly that in assembler.
> 
> That's not necessarily it.
> 
> People would be happy to have an easy way of telling the compiler that 
> all writes in the "if" branch of an if statement must be ordered after 
> any reads that the condition depends on.  Or maybe all writes in either 
> the "if" branch or the "else" branch.  And maybe not all reads that the 
> condition depends on, but just the reads appearing syntactically in the 
> condition.  Or maybe even just the volatile reads appearing in the 
> condition.  Nobody has said exactly.
> 
> The exact method used for doing this doesn't matter.  It could be 
> accomplished by treating those reads as load-acquires.  Or it could be 
> done by ensuring that the object code contains a dependency (control or 
> data) from the reads to the writes.  Or it could be done by treating 
> the writes as store-releases.  But we do want the execution-time 
> penalty to be small.
> 
> In short, we want to guarantee somehow that the conditional writes are 
> not re-ordered before the reads in the condition.  (But note that 
> "conditional writes" includes identical writes occurring in both 
> branches.)

What Alan said!  ;-)

							Thanx, Paul