locking: Introduce smp_mb__after_spinlock()
Since its inception, our understanding of ACQUIRE, esp. as applied to
spinlocks, has changed somewhat. Also, I wonder if, with a simple
change, we cannot make it provide more.
The problem with the comment is that the STORE done by spin_lock isn't
itself ordered by the ACQUIRE, and therefore a later LOAD can pass over
it and cross with any prior STORE, rendering the default WMB
insufficient (pointed out by Alan).
Now, this is only really a problem on PowerPC and ARM64, both of
which already defined smp_mb__before_spinlock() as a smp_mb().
At the same time, we can get a much stronger construct if we place
that same barrier _inside_ the spin_lock(). In that case we upgrade
the RCpc spinlock to an RCsc. That would make all schedule() calls
fully transitive against one another.
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <[email protected]>
Acked-by: Will Deacon <[email protected]>
Cc: Alan Stern <[email protected]>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <[email protected]>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <[email protected]>
Cc: Nicholas Piggin <[email protected]>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <[email protected]>
Cc: Paul McKenney <[email protected]>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <[email protected]>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <[email protected]>
diff --git a/include/linux/spinlock.h b/include/linux/spinlock.h
index d9510e8..8402810 100644
--- a/include/linux/spinlock.h
+++ b/include/linux/spinlock.h
@@ -130,6 +130,42 @@ do { \
#define smp_mb__before_spinlock() smp_wmb()
#endif
+/*
+ * This barrier must provide two things:
+ *
+ * - it must guarantee a STORE before the spin_lock() is ordered against a
+ * LOAD after it, see the comments at its two usage sites.
+ *
+ * - it must ensure the critical section is RCsc.
+ *
+ * The latter is important for cases where we observe values written by other
+ * CPUs in spin-loops, without barriers, while being subject to scheduling.
+ *
+ * CPU0 CPU1 CPU2
+ *
+ * for (;;) {
+ * if (READ_ONCE(X))
+ * break;
+ * }
+ * X=1
+ * <sched-out>
+ * <sched-in>
+ * r = X;
+ *
+ * without transitivity it could be that CPU1 observes X!=0 breaks the loop,
+ * we get migrated and CPU2 sees X==0.
+ *
+ * Since most load-store architectures implement ACQUIRE with an smp_mb() after
+ * the LL/SC loop, they need no further barriers. Similarly all our TSO
+ * architectures imply an smp_mb() for each atomic instruction and equally don't
+ * need more.
+ *
+ * Architectures that can implement ACQUIRE better need to take care.
+ */
+#ifndef smp_mb__after_spinlock
+#define smp_mb__after_spinlock() do { } while (0)
+#endif
+
/**
* raw_spin_unlock_wait - wait until the spinlock gets unlocked
* @lock: the spinlock in question.
