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authorManfred Spraul <manfred@colorfullife.com>2020-02-04 02:34:29 +0100
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2020-02-04 04:05:23 +0100
commit39323c64b8a95d10ddc66dc815dd14efdddf6777 (patch)
tree2221c4326ef7fa9ff3f4e773f51c38246c6f64ca /Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
parentmm/memory_hotplug: drop valid_start/valid_end from test_pages_in_a_zone() (diff)
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smp_mb__{before,after}_atomic(): update Documentation
When adding the _{acquire|release|relaxed}() variants of some atomic operations, it was forgotten to update Documentation/memory_barrier.txt: smp_mb__{before,after}_atomic() is now intended for all RMW operations that do not imply a memory barrier. 1) smp_mb__before_atomic(); atomic_add(); 2) smp_mb__before_atomic(); atomic_xchg_relaxed(); 3) smp_mb__before_atomic(); atomic_fetch_add_relaxed(); Invalid would be: smp_mb__before_atomic(); atomic_set(); In addition, the patch splits the long sentence into multiple shorter sentences. Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20191020123305.14715-2-manfred@colorfullife.com Fixes: 654672d4ba1a ("locking/atomics: Add _{acquire|release|relaxed}() variants of some atomic operations") Signed-off-by: Manfred Spraul <manfred@colorfullife.com> Acked-by: Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com> Cc: Davidlohr Bueso <dave@stgolabs.net> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: <1vier1@web.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/memory-barriers.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/memory-barriers.txt16
1 files changed, 10 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
index ec3b5865c1be..7146da061693 100644
--- a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
+++ b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
@@ -1868,12 +1868,16 @@ There are some more advanced barrier functions:
(*) smp_mb__before_atomic();
(*) smp_mb__after_atomic();
- These are for use with atomic (such as add, subtract, increment and
- decrement) functions that don't return a value, especially when used for
- reference counting. These functions do not imply memory barriers.
-
- These are also used for atomic bitop functions that do not return a
- value (such as set_bit and clear_bit).
+ These are for use with atomic RMW functions that do not imply memory
+ barriers, but where the code needs a memory barrier. Examples for atomic
+ RMW functions that do not imply are memory barrier are e.g. add,
+ subtract, (failed) conditional operations, _relaxed functions,
+ but not atomic_read or atomic_set. A common example where a memory
+ barrier may be required is when atomic ops are used for reference
+ counting.
+
+ These are also used for atomic RMW bitop functions that do not imply a
+ memory barrier (such as set_bit and clear_bit).
As an example, consider a piece of code that marks an object as being dead
and then decrements the object's reference count: