Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752439AbXHREP5 (ORCPT ); Sat, 18 Aug 2007 00:15:57 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750804AbXHREPp (ORCPT ); Sat, 18 Aug 2007 00:15:45 -0400 Received: from smtp2.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.14]:51408 "EHLO smtp2.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750743AbXHREPn (ORCPT ); Sat, 18 Aug 2007 00:15:43 -0400 Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 21:13:35 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Satyam Sharma cc: Christoph Lameter , "Paul E. McKenney" , Herbert Xu , Nick Piggin , Paul Mackerras , Segher Boessenkool , heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com, horms@verge.net.au, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, rpjday@mindspring.com, ak@suse.de, netdev@vger.kernel.org, cfriesen@nortel.com, akpm@linux-foundation.org, jesper.juhl@gmail.com, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, zlynx@acm.org, schwidefsky@de.ibm.com, Chris Snook , davem@davemloft.net, wensong@linux-vs.org, wjiang@resilience.com Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/24] make atomic_read() behave consistently across all architectures In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <20070815234021.GA28775@gondor.apana.org.au> <3694fb2e4ed1e4d9bf873c0d050c911e@kernel.crashing.org> <46C3B50E.7010702@yahoo.com.au> <194369f4c96ea0e24decf8f9197d5bad@kernel.crashing.org> <46C505B2.6030704@yahoo.com.au> <18117.4848.695269.72976@cargo.ozlabs.ibm.com> <46C516BA.60700@yahoo.com.au> <20070817235912.GA24314@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <20070818000913.GA25585@gondor.apana.org.au> <20070818010818.GQ8464@linux.vnet.ibm.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1077 Lines: 41 On Sat, 18 Aug 2007, Satyam Sharma wrote: > > No code does (or would do, or should do): > > x.counter++; > > on an "atomic_t x;" anyway. That's just an example of a general problem. No, you don't use "x.counter++". But you *do* use if (atomic_read(&x) <= 1) and loading into a register is stupid and pointless, when you could just do it as a regular memory-operand to the cmp instruction. And as far as the compiler is concerned, the problem is the 100% same: combining operations with the volatile memop. The fact is, a compiler that thinks that movl mem,reg cmpl $val,reg is any better than cmpl $val,mem is just not a very good compiler. But when talking about "volatile", that's exactly what ytou always get (and always have gotten - this is not a regression, and I doubt gcc is alone in this). Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/