[Ksummit-discuss] [TECH TOPIC] asm-generic implementations of low-level synchronisation constructs

Peter Zijlstra peterz at infradead.org
Thu May 8 09:13:12 UTC 2014


On Wed, May 07, 2014 at 10:20:01PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> > In any case, something that's been brewing in the back of my mind is an
> > ATOMIC_OP() and ATOMIC_RET_OP() macro construct that takes a lambda
> > function (expr-stmt is I think the closes we get in C) and either
> > generates the appropriate ll/sc loop or a cmpxchg loop, depending on
> > arch.
> 
> I've been thinking along the same lines but decided it was a bit too
> abstract to propose here. I'd certainly be interested in talking about it
> though. Another cool thing would be to allow for arbitrary compositions of
> different atomic operations, then apply barrier semantics to the whole lot.
> Not sure how much mileage there is in that though, especially given the
> typical architectural restrictions on what you can in a LL/SC loop (and
> if they get too big, you shoot yourself in the foot).

OK, so I was bored in a waiting room..

So I've not yet had a look at all the arch ll/sc loop restrictions, for
some I'm sure the below will not work, but I'm hoping that for some
others it at least has a chance.

(also, waiting rooms suck..)

More or less Pseudo C, the ATOMIC things should be proper macros but I
was too lazy to do all the \ muck.

---

#ifndef load_exclusive
#define load_exclusive(ptr) ACCESS_ONCE(*ptr)
#endif

#ifndef	cmpxchg_relaxed
#define cmpxchg_relaxed	cmpxchg
#endif

/*
 * The 'stmt' statements below must include a statement of the form:
 *   __new == f(__val);
 * which computes the new value from the current/old value.
 *
 * The __ret argument should be either __new or __val, to return the new or old
 * value resp.
 */

#ifdef HAS_LL_SC

ATOMIC(ptr, stmt)
do {
	typeof(*ptr) __new, __val;

	do {
		__val = load_locked(ptr);
		stmt;
	} while (!store_conditional(ptr, __new));
} while (0)


ATOMIC_RET(ptr, __ret, stmt)
({
	typeof(*ptr) __new, __val;

	smp_mb__before_llsc();

	do {
		__val = load_locked(ptr);
		stmt;
	} while (!store_conditional(ptr, __new));

	smp_mb__after_llsc();

	__ret;
})

#else

ATOMIC(ptr, stmt)
do {
	typeof(*ptr) __old, __new, __val;

	__val = load_exclusive(ptr);
	for (;;) {
		stmt;
		__old = cmpxchg_relaxed(ptr, __val, __new);
		if (__old == __val)
			break;
		__val = __old;
	}
} while (0)

ATOMIC(ptr, __ret, stmt)
({
	typeof(*ptr) __old, __new, __val;

	__val = load_exclusive(ptr);
	for (;;) {
		stmt;
		__old = cmpxchg(ptr, __val, __new);
		if (__old == __val)
			break;
		__val = __old;
	}

	__ret;
})

#endif


static inline int atomic_add_unless(atomic_t *v, int a, int u)
{
	return ATOMIC_RET(&v->counter, __old,
		if (unlikely(__val == u))
			break;
		__new = __val + a;
	);
}


And this also raises your other point, what barrier does/should
add_unless() imply in the failure case. The cmpxchg() variant won't in
fact guarantee any barrier, while the ll/sc one depends on the arch.

Also, maybe, we should take this discussion elsewhere.. :-)


More information about the Ksummit-discuss mailing list