On Thu, 16 Aug 2007, Paul Mackerras wrote:

quoted text
> In the kernel we use atomic variables in precisely those situations
> where a variable is potentially accessed concurrently by multiple
> CPUs, and where each CPU needs to see updates done by other CPUs in a
> timely fashion.  That is what they are for.  Therefore the compiler
> must not cache values of atomic variables in registers; each
> atomic_read must result in a load and each atomic_set must result in a
> store.  Anything else will just lead to subtle bugs.

This may have been the intend. However, today the visibility is controlled 
using barriers. And we have barriers that we use with atomic operations. 
Having volatile be the default just lead to confusion. Atomic read should 
just read with no extras. Extras can be added by using variants like 
atomic_read_volatile or so.

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