> So you would say change the global h/w register variables[*] to be addresses
quoted text
> instead, and change all the references to be readX and writeX?  I'm wary of

Ok so these are not addresses but magic registers in the processor ? Then
I guess volatile makes complete sense.

quoted text
> > Similarly spin_lock/unlock are store barriers so for ring buffers should
> > be sufficient unless you have cache management requirements in which case
> > the dma_* APIs will handle those bits.
> 
> I don't actually need locks, but sticking smp_rmb()/smp_wmb() is probably the
> right thing to do now that I know how to use them.  This code was written five
> or six years ago and I haven't really thought about changing that since.
> 
> I don't see how the dma_* APIs would help.  The buffer is filled by a higher
> priority interrupt routine that does 'virtual DMA'.  It's not actually done by
> real DMA.  Normal interrupt disablement doesn't really disable interrupts, it
> justs excludes normal priority interrupts.

For real DMA the dma_ APIs keep coherency

quoted text
> The virtual DMA is done is ASM as it has to be really quick.  It's unfortunate,
> but, the on-chip serial ports don't have a FIFO.

For PIO (virtual DMA or otherwise) the locking does that. Because
spin_unlock and spin_lock are compiler barriers the need to use volatile
shouldn't normally be there. If you are doing it via asm without locks
then I would expect atomic_t because the sematics of volatile are
horribly vague on their own ?

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