Linus Torvalds wrote:

So the only reason to add back "volatile" to the atomic_read() sequence is 
not to fix bugs, but to _hide_ the bugs better. They're still there, they 
are just a lot harder to trigger, and tend to be a lot subtler.

What about barrier removal?  With consistent semantics we could optimize a fair 
amount of code.  Whether or not that constitutes "premature" optimization is 
open to debate, but there's no question we could reduce our register wiping in 
some places.

	-- Chris