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-rw-r--r--Documentation/memory-barriers.txt28
1 files changed, 17 insertions, 11 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
index a4de88fb55f0..d67c508eb660 100644
--- a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
+++ b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
@@ -697,30 +697,36 @@ should do something like the following:
}
Finally, control dependencies do -not- provide transitivity. This is
-demonstrated by two related examples:
+demonstrated by two related examples, with the initial values of
+x and y both being zero:
CPU 0 CPU 1
===================== =====================
r1 = ACCESS_ONCE(x); r2 = ACCESS_ONCE(y);
- if (r1 >= 0) if (r2 >= 0)
+ if (r1 > 0) if (r2 > 0)
ACCESS_ONCE(y) = 1; ACCESS_ONCE(x) = 1;
assert(!(r1 == 1 && r2 == 1));
The above two-CPU example will never trigger the assert(). However,
if control dependencies guaranteed transitivity (which they do not),
-then adding the following two CPUs would guarantee a related assertion:
+then adding the following CPU would guarantee a related assertion:
- CPU 2 CPU 3
- ===================== =====================
- ACCESS_ONCE(x) = 2; ACCESS_ONCE(y) = 2;
+ CPU 2
+ =====================
+ ACCESS_ONCE(x) = 2;
+
+ assert(!(r1 == 2 && r2 == 1 && x == 2)); /* FAILS!!! */
- assert(!(r1 == 2 && r2 == 2 && x == 1 && y == 1)); /* FAILS!!! */
+But because control dependencies do -not- provide transitivity, the above
+assertion can fail after the combined three-CPU example completes. If you
+need the three-CPU example to provide ordering, you will need smp_mb()
+between the loads and stores in the CPU 0 and CPU 1 code fragments,
+that is, just before or just after the "if" statements.
-But because control dependencies do -not- provide transitivity, the
-above assertion can fail after the combined four-CPU example completes.
-If you need the four-CPU example to provide ordering, you will need
-smp_mb() between the loads and stores in the CPU 0 and CPU 1 code fragments.
+These two examples are the LB and WWC litmus tests from this paper:
+http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/pes20/ppc-supplemental/test6.pdf and this
+site: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/ppcmem/index.html.
In summary: