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) <peterz@infradead.org>
Acked-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Cc: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
Cc: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc: Paul McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>

2 files changed, 39 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/atomic.h b/include/linux/atomic.h
index c56be7410130..40d6bfec0e0d 100644
--- a/include/linux/atomic.h
+++ b/include/linux/atomic.h
@@ -38,6 +38,9 @@
  * Besides, if an arch has a special barrier for acquire/release, it could
  * implement its own __atomic_op_* and use the same framework for building
  * variants
+ *
+ * If an architecture overrides __atomic_op_acquire() it will probably want
+ * to define smp_mb__after_spinlock().
  */
 #ifndef __atomic_op_acquire
 #define __atomic_op_acquire(op, args...)				\
diff --git a/include/linux/spinlock.h b/include/linux/spinlock.h
index d9510e8522d4..840281095933 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.