The documentation for smp_read_barrier_depends() does not mention the architectures
for which it is an optimization, for example ARM and PPC. As a result, it is not
clear to the reader why one would use it. Relegate Alpha to a footnote together
with other architectures where it is equivalent to smp_rmb().
Suggested-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
On ARM, seqcst loads and stores (which QEMU does not use) are compiled
respectively as LDAR and STLR instructions. Even though LDAR is
also used for load-acquire operations, it also waits for all STLRs to
leave the store buffer. Thus, LDAR and STLR alone are load-acquire
and store-release operations, but LDAR also provides store-against-load
ordering as long as the previous store is a STLR.
Compare this to ARMv7, where store-release is DMB+STR and load-acquire
is LDR+DMB, but an additional DMB is needed between store-seqcst and
load-seqcst (e.g. DMB+STR+DMB+LDR+DMB); or with x86, where MOV provides
load-acquire and store-release semantics and the two can be reordered.
Likewise, on ARM sequentially consistent read-modify-write operations only
need to use LDAXR and STLXR respectively for the load and the store, while
on x86 they need to use the stronger LOCK prefix.
In a strange twist of events, however, the _stronger_ semantics
of the ARM instructions can end up causing bugs on ARM, not on x86.
The problems occur when seqcst atomics are mixed with relaxed atomics.
QEMU's atomics try to bridge the Linux API (that most of the developers
are familiar with) and the C11 API, and the two have a substantial
difference:
- in Linux, strongly-ordered atomics such as atomic_add_return() affect
the global ordering of _all_ memory operations, including for example
READ_ONCE()/WRITE_ONCE()
- in C11, sequentially consistent atomics (except for seq-cst fences)
only affect the ordering of sequentially consistent operations.
In particular, since relaxed loads are done with LDR on ARM, they are
not ordered against seqcst stores (which are done with STLR).
QEMU implements high-level synchronization primitives with the idea that
the primitives contain the necessary memory barriers, and the callers can
use relaxed atomics (qatomic_read/qatomic_set) or even regular accesses.
This is very much incompatible with the C11 view that seqcst accesses
are only ordered against other seqcst accesses, and requires using seqcst
fences as in the following example:
qatomic_set(&y, 1); qatomic_set(&x, 1);
smp_mb(); smp_mb();
... qatomic_read(&x) ... ... qatomic_read(&y) ...
When a qatomic_*() read-modify write operation is used instead of one
or both stores, developers that are more familiar with the Linux API may
be tempted to omit the smp_mb(), which will work on x86 but not on ARM.
This nasty difference between Linux and C11 read-modify-write operations
has already caused issues in util/async.c and more are being found.
Provide something similar to Linux smp_mb__before/after_atomic(); this
has the double function of documenting clearly why there is a memory
barrier, and avoiding a double barrier on x86 and s390x systems.
The new macro can already be put to use in qatomic_mb_set().
Reviewed-by: Richard Henderson <richard.henderson@linaro.org>
Reviewed-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Convert tcg/README to rst and move it to docs/devel as a new "TCG Intermediate
Representation" page. There are a few minor changes to improve the aesthetic
of the final output which are as follows:
- Rename the title from "Tiny Code Generator - Fabrice Bellard" to "TCG
Intermediate Representation"
- Remove the section numbering
- Add the missing parameters to the ssadd_vec operations in the "Host
vector operations" section
- Change the path to the Atomic Operations document to use a proper
reference
- Replace tcg/README in tcg.rst with a proper reference to the new document
Signed-off-by: Mark Cave-Ayland <mark.cave-ayland@ilande.co.uk>
Reviewed-by: Fabiano Rosas <farosas@suse.de>
Message-Id: <20221130100434.64207-2-mark.cave-ayland@ilande.co.uk>
Signed-off-by: Richard Henderson <richard.henderson@linaro.org>
clang's C11 atomic_fetch_*() functions only take a C11 atomic type
pointer argument. QEMU uses direct types (int, etc) and this causes a
compiler error when a QEMU code calls these functions in a source file
that also included <stdatomic.h> via a system header file:
$ CC=clang CXX=clang++ ./configure ... && make
../util/async.c:79:17: error: address argument to atomic operation must be a pointer to _Atomic type ('unsigned int *' invalid)
Avoid using atomic_*() names in QEMU's atomic.h since that namespace is
used by <stdatomic.h>. Prefix QEMU's APIs with 'q' so that atomic.h
and <stdatomic.h> can co-exist. I checked /usr/include on my machine and
searched GitHub for existing "qatomic_" users but there seem to be none.
This patch was generated using:
$ git grep -h -o '\<atomic\(64\)\?_[a-z0-9_]\+' include/qemu/atomic.h | \
sort -u >/tmp/changed_identifiers
$ for identifier in $(</tmp/changed_identifiers); do
sed -i "s%\<$identifier\>%q$identifier%g" \
$(git grep -I -l "\<$identifier\>")
done
I manually fixed line-wrap issues and misaligned rST tables.
Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Philippe Mathieu-Daudé <philmd@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <20200923105646.47864-1-stefanha@redhat.com>
Some of the constraints on operand sizes have been relaxed, so adjust the
documentation.
Deprecate atomic_mb_read and atomic_mb_set; it is not really possible to
use them correctly because they do not interoperate with sequentially-consistent
RMW operations.
Finally, extend the memory barrier pairing section to cover acquire and
release semantics in general, roughly based on the KVM Forum 2016 talk,
"<atomic.h> weapons".
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
