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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/memory-barriers.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/memory-barriers.txt | 24 |
1 files changed, 24 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt index 6bee0a2c43ab..e9ebeb3b1077 100644 --- a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt +++ b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt @@ -555,6 +555,30 @@ between the address load and the data load: This enforces the occurrence of one of the two implications, and prevents the third possibility from arising. +A data-dependency barrier must also order against dependent writes: + + CPU 1 CPU 2 + =============== =============== + { A == 1, B == 2, C = 3, P == &A, Q == &C } + B = 4; + <write barrier> + WRITE_ONCE(P, &B); + Q = READ_ONCE(P); + <data dependency barrier> + *Q = 5; + +The data-dependency barrier must order the read into Q with the store +into *Q. This prohibits this outcome: + + (Q == B) && (B == 4) + +Please note that this pattern should be rare. After all, the whole point +of dependency ordering is to -prevent- writes to the data structure, along +with the expensive cache misses associated with those writes. This pattern +can be used to record rare error conditions and the like, and the ordering +prevents such records from being lost. + + [!] Note that this extremely counterintuitive situation arises most easily on machines with split caches, so that, for example, one cache bank processes even-numbered cache lines and the other bank processes odd-numbered cache |