Re: [RFC PATCH 2/2] PCI: apple: Add driver for the Apple M1

[Arnd Bergmann <arnd@kernel.org>]

On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 11:57 PM Marc Zyngier <maz@kernel.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Aug 2021 02:31:40 +0100, Alyssa Rosenzweig <alyssa@rosenzweig.io> wrote:
>
> > > Please use relaxed accessors. If the barriers are actually needed,
> > > please document what you are ordering against. This applies throughout
> > > the patch.
> >
> > Relaxed accessors are used throughout in v2... it Works For Me™ but no
> > guarantees I didn't introduce a race...
>
> That's not exactly what I wanted to read... You really need to make an
> informed decision on the need of barriers. If the MMIO write needs to
> be ordered after a main memory write (i.e. a memory write that is
> consumed by the device you are subsequently writing to), you then need
> a barrier. If, as I suspect, the device isn't DMA capable and doesn't
> require ordering with the rest of the memory accesses, then no
> barriers are required.

My normal rule is to always use the normal accessors, and only use
any special variants if this is either required for correct operation
(e.g. heavy barriers on arm32 may call code that must not recursively
use heavy barriers) or that you have proven to /both/ be correct and
relevant for performance. IOW, don't use the relaxed accessors just
because it isn't wrong in your driver, other developers may copy the
code into a driver that can't do it.

      Arnd