[PATCH v2 02/20] documentation: Clarify failed cmpxchg memory ordering semantics

Will Deacon will.deacon at arm.com
Fri Jul 24 03:41:53 PDT 2015


A failed cmpxchg does not provide any memory ordering guarantees, a
property that is used to optimise the cmpxchg implementations on Alpha,
PowerPC and arm64.

This patch updates atomic_ops.txt and memory-barriers.txt to reflect
this.

Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz at infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon at arm.com>
---
 Documentation/atomic_ops.txt      | 4 +++-
 Documentation/memory-barriers.txt | 6 +++---
 2 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/atomic_ops.txt b/Documentation/atomic_ops.txt
index dab6da3382d9..b19fc34efdb1 100644
--- a/Documentation/atomic_ops.txt
+++ b/Documentation/atomic_ops.txt
@@ -266,7 +266,9 @@ with the given old and new values. Like all atomic_xxx operations,
 atomic_cmpxchg will only satisfy its atomicity semantics as long as all
 other accesses of *v are performed through atomic_xxx operations.
 
-atomic_cmpxchg must provide explicit memory barriers around the operation.
+atomic_cmpxchg must provide explicit memory barriers around the operation,
+although if the comparison fails then no memory ordering guarantees are
+required.
 
 The semantics for atomic_cmpxchg are the same as those defined for 'cas'
 below.
diff --git a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
index 13feb697271f..18fc860df1be 100644
--- a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
+++ b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
@@ -2383,9 +2383,7 @@ about the state (old or new) implies an SMP-conditional general memory barrier
 explicit lock operations, described later).  These include:
 
 	xchg();
-	cmpxchg();
 	atomic_xchg();			atomic_long_xchg();
-	atomic_cmpxchg();		atomic_long_cmpxchg();
 	atomic_inc_return();		atomic_long_inc_return();
 	atomic_dec_return();		atomic_long_dec_return();
 	atomic_add_return();		atomic_long_add_return();
@@ -2398,7 +2396,9 @@ explicit lock operations, described later).  These include:
 	test_and_clear_bit();
 	test_and_change_bit();
 
-	/* when succeeds (returns 1) */
+	/* when succeeds */
+	cmpxchg();
+	atomic_cmpxchg();		atomic_long_cmpxchg();
 	atomic_add_unless();		atomic_long_add_unless();
 
 These are used for such things as implementing ACQUIRE-class and RELEASE-class
-- 
2.1.4




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