From 1566bf4b13daa66e3de6fdbc77ee3995df5a9064 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Joel Fernandes (Google)" Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2023 16:27:45 +0000 Subject: docs: memory-barriers: Add note on compiler transformation and address deps The compiler has the ability to cause misordering by destroying address-dependency barriers if comparison operations are used. Add a note about this to memory-barriers.txt in the beginning of both the historical address-dependency sections and point to rcu-dereference.rst for more information. Signed-off-by: Joel Fernandes (Google) Cc: Alan Stern Cc: Will Deacon Cc: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Boqun Feng Cc: Nicholas Piggin Cc: David Howells Cc: Jade Alglave Cc: Luc Maranget Cc: Akira Yokosawa Cc: Daniel Lustig Cc: Joel Fernandes Cc: Jonathan Corbet Reviewed-by: Andrea Parri Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney --- Documentation/memory-barriers.txt | 7 +++++++ 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt index 06e14efd8662..d414e145f912 100644 --- a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt +++ b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt @@ -396,6 +396,10 @@ Memory barriers come in four basic varieties: (2) Address-dependency barriers (historical). + [!] This section is marked as HISTORICAL: For more up-to-date + information, including how compiler transformations related to pointer + comparisons can sometimes cause problems, see + Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst. An address-dependency barrier is a weaker form of read barrier. In the case where two loads are performed such that the second depends on the @@ -556,6 +560,9 @@ There are certain things that the Linux kernel memory barriers do not guarantee: ADDRESS-DEPENDENCY BARRIERS (HISTORICAL) ---------------------------------------- +[!] This section is marked as HISTORICAL: For more up-to-date information, +including how compiler transformations related to pointer comparisons can +sometimes cause problems, see Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst. As of v4.15 of the Linux kernel, an smp_mb() was added to READ_ONCE() for DEC Alpha, which means that about the only people who need to pay attention -- cgit v1.2.3