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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/memory-barriers.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/memory-barriers.txt | 44 |
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diff --git a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt index 70a09f8a0383..a10f7cd2619e 100644 --- a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt +++ b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt @@ -269,6 +269,50 @@ And there are a number of things that _must_ or _must_not_ be assumed: STORE *(A + 4) = Y; STORE *A = X; STORE {*A, *(A + 4) } = {X, Y}; +And there are anti-guarantees: + + (*) These guarantees do not apply to bitfields, because compilers often + generate code to modify these using non-atomic read-modify-write + sequences. Do not attempt to use bitfields to synchronize parallel + algorithms. + + (*) Even in cases where bitfields are protected by locks, all fields + in a given bitfield must be protected by one lock. If two fields + in a given bitfield are protected by different locks, the compiler's + non-atomic read-modify-write sequences can cause an update to one + field to corrupt the value of an adjacent field. + + (*) These guarantees apply only to properly aligned and sized scalar + variables. "Properly sized" currently means variables that are + the same size as "char", "short", "int" and "long". "Properly + aligned" means the natural alignment, thus no constraints for + "char", two-byte alignment for "short", four-byte alignment for + "int", and either four-byte or eight-byte alignment for "long", + on 32-bit and 64-bit systems, respectively. Note that these + guarantees were introduced into the C11 standard, so beware when + using older pre-C11 compilers (for example, gcc 4.6). The portion + of the standard containing this guarantee is Section 3.14, which + defines "memory location" as follows: + + memory location + either an object of scalar type, or a maximal sequence + of adjacent bit-fields all having nonzero width + + NOTE 1: Two threads of execution can update and access + separate memory locations without interfering with + each other. + + NOTE 2: A bit-field and an adjacent non-bit-field member + are in separate memory locations. The same applies + to two bit-fields, if one is declared inside a nested + structure declaration and the other is not, or if the two + are separated by a zero-length bit-field declaration, + or if they are separated by a non-bit-field member + declaration. It is not safe to concurrently update two + bit-fields in the same structure if all members declared + between them are also bit-fields, no matter what the + sizes of those intervening bit-fields happen to be. + ========================= WHAT ARE MEMORY BARRIERS? |