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Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()?

From Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
Newsgroups linux.kernel
Subject Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()?
Date 2016-09-02 20:20 +0200
Message-ID <sd1eh-2Tg-7@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
Organization linux.* mail to news gateway

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Paul, Peter, and Ingo:

This must have come up before, but I don't know what was decided.

Isn't it often true that a memory barrier is needed before a call to 
wake_up_process()?  A typical scenario might look like this:

	CPU 0
	-----
	for (;;) {
		set_current_state(TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE);
		if (signal_pending(current))
			break;
		if (wakeup_flag)
			break;
		schedule();
	}
	__set_current_state(TASK_RUNNING);
	wakeup_flag = 0;


	CPU 1
	-----
	wakeup_flag = 1;
	wake_up_process(my_task);

The underlying pattern is:

	CPU 0				CPU 1
	-----				-----
	write current->state		write wakeup_flag
	smp_mb();
	read wakeup_flag		read my_task->state

where set_current_state() does the write to current->state and 
automatically adds the smp_mb(), and wake_up_process() reads 
my_task->state to see whether the task needs to be woken up.

The kerneldoc for wake_up_process() says that it has no implied memory
barrier if it doesn't actually wake anything up.  And even when it
does, the implied barrier is only smp_wmb, not smp_mb.

This is the so-called SB (Store Buffer) pattern, which is well known to
require a full smp_mb on both sides.  Since wake_up_process() doesn't
include smp_mb(), isn't it correct that the caller must add it
explicitly?

In other words, shouldn't the code for CPU 1 really be:

	wakeup_flag = 1;
	smp_mb();
	wake_up_process(task);

If my reasoning is correct, then why doesn't wake_up_process() include 
this memory barrier automatically, the way set_current_state() does?  
There could be an alternate version (__wake_up_process()) which omits 
the barrier, just like __set_current_state().

Alan Stern

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Thread

Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu> - 2016-09-02 20:20 +0200
  Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com> - 2016-09-02 20:50 +0200
    Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu> - 2016-09-02 22:30 +0200
      Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com> - 2016-09-03 11:10 +0200
      Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-03 14:40 +0200
        Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu> - 2016-09-03 16:30 +0200
          Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu> - 2016-09-03 16:50 +0200
            Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-05 10:40 +0200
              Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu> - 2016-09-05 17:30 +0200
                Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-06 13:40 +0200
                Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-06 13:50 +0200
                Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-06 14:30 +0200
                Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu> - 2016-09-06 16:50 +0200
                Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-06 17:10 +0200
                Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Felipe Balbi <felipe.balbi@linux.intel.com> - 2016-09-07 12:20 +0200
                Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Felipe Balbi <felipe.balbi@linux.intel.com> - 2016-09-06 13:50 +0200
  Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-02 21:30 +0200
    Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu> - 2016-09-02 22:20 +0200
      Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-03 00:20 +0200
        Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com> - 2016-09-05 11:50 +0200
          Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-06 13:20 +0200
      Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-03 00:20 +0200
        Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Felipe Balbi <felipe.balbi@linux.intel.com> - 2016-09-03 09:00 +0200
          Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-03 14:50 +0200
            Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Felipe Balbi <felipe.balbi@linux.intel.com> - 2016-09-03 16:00 +0200
              Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-05 10:10 +0200
            Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu> - 2016-09-03 16:20 +0200
              Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-05 10:10 +0200
                Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu> - 2016-09-05 16:40 +0200
      Re: Memory barrier needed with wake_up_process()? Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-09-03 00:20 +0200

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