On Fri, 7 Nov 2008, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
quoted text
> 
>   __m_cnt_hi
>  is read before
>   mmio cnt_lo read
> 
> for the detailed reasons explained in my previous discussion with
> Nicolas here :
> http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/10/21/1
> 
> I use smp_rmb() to do this on SMP systems (hrm, actually, a rmb() could
> be required so it works also on UP systems safely wrt interrupts).

smp_rmb turns into a compiler barrier on UP and should prevent the below
description.

-- Steve

quoted text
> 
> The write side is between the hardware counter, which is assumed to
> increment monotonically between each read, and the value __m_cnt_hi
> updated by the CPU. I don't see where we could put a wmb() there.
> 
> Without barrier, the smp race looks as follow :
> 
> 
> CPU    A                                    B
>                                             read hw cnt low (0xFFFFFFFA)
>        read __m_cnt_hi (0x80000000)
>        read hw cnt low (0x00000001)
>        (wrap detected :
>         (s32)(0x80000000 ^ 0x1) < 0)
>        write __m_cnt_hi = 0x00000001
>                                             read __m_cnt_hi (0x00000001)
>        return 0x0000000100000001
>                                             (wrap detected :
>                                              (s32)(0x00000001 ^ 0xFFFFFFFA) < 0)
>                                             write __m_cnt_hi = 0x80000001
>                                             return 0x80000001FFFFFFFA
>                                                                   (time jumps)
> 
> And UP interrupt race :
> 
>        Thread context                       Interrupts
>        read hw cnt low (0xFFFFFFFA)
>                                             read __m_cnt_hi (0x80000000)
>                                             read hw cnt low (0x00000001)
>                                             (wrap detected :
>                                              (s32)(0x80000000 ^ 0x1) < 0)
>                                             write __m_cnt_hi = 0x00000001
>        read __m_cnt_hi (0x00000001)
>                                             return 0x0000000100000001
>        (wrap detected :
>         (s32)(0x00000001 ^ 0xFFFFFFFA) < 0)
>        write __m_cnt_hi = 0x80000001
>        return 0x80000001FFFFFFFA
>                 (time jumps)
> 
--
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