Thread (10 messages) flat view 10 messages, 4 authors, 2014-02-05
STALE4613d

[PATCH V2] arm64: add DSB after icache flush in __flush_icache_all()

From: Will Deacon <hidden>
Date: 2014-01-31 00:16:48

Hi Nico,

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 09:42:29PM +0000, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
On Thu, 30 Jan 2014, Will Deacon wrote:
quoted
On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 06:04:43AM +0000, Vinayak Kale wrote:
quoted
Can you please elaborate whether you are referring to lack of memory
clobber or missing barriers?
The clobbers. For example:

arch/arm64/kvm/sys_regs.c:

        /* Make sure noone else changes CSSELR during this! */
        local_irq_disable();
        /* Put value into CSSELR */
        asm volatile("msr csselr_el1, %x0" : : "r" (csselr));
        isb();
        /* Read result out of CCSIDR */
        asm volatile("mrs %0, ccsidr_el1" : "=r" (ccsidr));
        local_irq_enable();

Just about everything can be re-ordered in that block, because the asm
volatile statements don't have "memory" clobbers.
I don't think they would be reordered at all with the 
volatile qualifiers.
Whilst that may be the case in current compilers (i.e. I've not actually
seen the above sequence get re-ordered), the GCC documentation states that:

  Similarly, you can't expect a sequence of volatile asm instructions to remain
  perfectly consecutive. If you want consecutive output, use a single asm. Also,
  GCC performs some optimizations across a volatile asm instruction; GCC does not
  `forget everything' when it encounters a volatile asm instruction the way some
  other compilers do.

so I really think that the "memory" clobbers are needed to ensure strict
ordering. This matches my understanding from discussions with the compiler
engineers at ARM.

Will
Keyboard shortcuts
hback out one level
jnext message in thread
kprevious message in thread
ldrill in
Escclose help / fold thread tree
?toggle this help