[PATCH] Document Linux's memory barriers [try #4]
Eric W. Biederman
ebiederm at xmission.com
Mon Mar 13 04:15:20 EST 2006
A small nit. You are not documenting the most subtle memory barrier:
smp_read_barrier_depends(); Which is a deep requirement of the RCU
code.
As I understand it. On some architectures (alpha) without at least
this a load from a pointer can load from the an old pointer value.
At one point it was suggested this be called:
read_memory_barrier_data_dependent().
Simply calling: rcu_dereference is what all users should call but
the semantics should be documented at least so that people porting
Linux can have a chance of getting it right.
Eric
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