On Sun, 28 Aug 2011, Ming Lei wrote:

quoted

I've been following this whole discussion. ?I didn't understand the
idea behind the original patch, and I don't understand this. ?What
reason is there for adding a memory barrier after the "dummy->hw_token
= token" line? ?Such a barrier would not accomplish anything useful,
because there are no later memory accesses which need to be ordered
with respect to that line.

Here, mb is used to synchronize  between writing of CPU and reading of
ehci HC, see below:

A memory barrier never synchronizes events between two processors (for
example, between the CPU and HC).  It only affects ordering for the
processor it executes on.  That's why you always have to use memory
barriers in pairs for inter-CPU synchronization: one memory barrier 
instruction for each CPU.

	CPU								EHCI
	dummy->hw_token = token;
	mb
									read  dummy->hw_token

The mb() introduced  was supposed to be used to make sure that EHCI
can see the correct value of  dummy->hw_token.

It won't do that.  All it will do is guarantee that the CPU writes out 
dumy->hw_token before it writes out or reads in any values executed 
after the mb.

 If EHCI can't get the correct
hw_token in time, it will work badly, such as irq delay or irq lost which may be
caused by mistaken 'IOC' or 'total bytes to transfer' in hw_token.

No.  All that will happen is that the HC will execute the qTD a little 
later, when it does read the correct hw_token.  No IRQs will be lost, 
and there will be no mistaken IOC or "total bytes to transfer" values.

 This is just
what the patch is to fix.

The patch won't fix this.  You're trying to force the CPU to write out 
dummy->hw_token more quickly.  A memory barrier won't do that.  And 
even if the CPU does write out the value more quickly, that doesn't 
guarantee it will be in time for the HC to see the new value right 
away.

But I think the above is still not correct, and the correct way may be
like below:

	CPU								EHCI
	dummy->hw_token = token;
	wmb
	qh->hw->hw_qtd_next = QTD_NEXT(ehci, dummy->qtd_dma);

If you do this write, you will corrupt the hardware list.  You _must_
_not_ modify the hardware fields of an active QH.

Besides, qh_link_async() calls qh_refresh() -> qh_update(), which does 
this already.  And it does this correctly, with the appropriate checks 
to make sure the QH isn't active.

									fetch next qtd from qh->hw->hw_qtd_next
									read  qtd->hw_token

The problem is that qh has already linked dummy into its queue before(as did in
qh_update), so even after 'dummy->hw_token = token;' is executed on CPU, EHCI
still may not fetch the up-to-date value of the qtd(dummy in here),
and this should
be the root cause, IMO.

There's no way to fix this.  The CPU and the HC are independent.  The 
HC is allowed to cache values whenever it likes (within certain 
limits).  If it has already cached an old value from the qTD, there's 
no way to force it to use a new value.  You just have to wait until it 
refreshes its cache.

Alan Stern