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SubjectRe: [patch 1/2] i386: use asm() like the other atomic operations already do.
Herbert Xu wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 01:02:23PM -0400, Chris Snook wrote:
>> Herbert Xu wrote:
>>> Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> wrote:
>>>>> My config with march=pentium-m and gcc (GCC) 4.1.2 (Gentoo 4.1.2):
>>>>> text data bss dec hex filename
>>>>> 3434150 249176 176128 3859454 3ae3fe atomic_normal/vmlinux
>>>>> 3435308 249176 176128 3860612 3ae884 atomic_inlineasm/vmlinux
>>>> What is the difference between atomic_normal and atomic_inlineasm?
>>> The inline asm stops certain optimisations from occuring.
>>>
>>> I'm still unconvinced why we need this because nobody has
>>> brought up any examples of kernel code that legitimately
>>> need this.
>> There's plenty of kernel code that *wants* this though. If we can
>
> You keep saying this yet everytime I ask for an example I
> get nothing.

Just look for all the code (and there's an immense amount) that has a
barrier() between two atomic_* operations, or in a loop with such
operations. With these patches merged, we can proceed to *remove* those
barriers.

>> reduce the need for register-clobbering barriers, shrink our binaries,
>> shrink our code, improve performance, and avoid heisenbugs, I think it's
>> a win, whether or not we *need* it.
>
> Hmm, you're increasing our binary size and probably killing
> performance.

The cost of these patches themselves is negligible, since people pretty
much always use barriers in places where it would matter. The long-term
benefit is that with guaranteed volatile behavior, we can go through and
remove a whole bunch of these barriers.

-- Chris
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