[PATCH v2] barriers: introduce smp_mb__release_acquire and update documentation

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 12:29:23PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 10:24:52AM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 04:34:51PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > > There is also the question of whether the barrier forces ordering
> > > of unrelated stores, everything initially zero and all accesses
> > > READ_ONCE() or WRITE_ONCE():
> > > 
> > > 	P0		P1		P2		P3
> > > 	X = 1;		Y = 1;		r1 = X;		r3 = Y;
> > > 					some_barrier();	some_barrier();
> > > 					r2 = Y;		r4 = X;
> > > 
> > > P2's and P3's ordering could be globally visible without requiring
> > > P0's and P1's independent stores to be ordered, for example, if you
> > > used smp_rmb() for some_barrier().  In contrast, if we used smp_mb()
> > > for barrier, everyone would agree on the order of P0's and P0's stores.
> > 
> > Oh!?
> 
> Behold sequential consistency, worshipped fervently by a surprisingly
> large number of people!  Something about legacy proof methods, as near
> as I can tell.  ;-)

But how can smp_mb() guarantee anything about P[01]? There is but the
single store, which can race against P[23] arbitrarily. There is nothing
to order.

Maybe I'm confused again..