Re: perf events ring buffer memory barrier on powerpc

[Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>]

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 11:48:44AM +0000, James Hogan wrote:
> Hi Peter,
> 
> On 30/10/13 10:42, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > Subject: perf, tool: Add required memory barriers
> > 
> > To match patch bf378d341e48 ("perf: Fix perf ring buffer memory
> > ordering") change userspace to also adhere to the ordering outlined.
> > 
> > Most barrier implementations were gleaned from
> > arch/*/include/asm/barrier.h and with the exception of metag I'm fairly
> > sure they're correct.
> 
> Yeh...
> 
> Short answer:
> For Meta you're probably best off assuming
> CONFIG_METAG_SMP_WRITE_REORDERING=n and just using compiler barriers.

Thanks, fixed it that way.

> Long answer:
> The issue with write reordering between Meta's hardware threads beyond
> the cache is only with a particular SoC, and SMP is not used in
> production on it.
> It is possible to make the LINSYSEVENT_WR_COMBINE_FLUSH register
> writable to userspace (it's in a non-mappable region already) but even
> then the write to that register needs odd placement to be effective
> (before the shmem write rather than after - which isn't a place any
> existing barriers are guaranteed to be placed). I'm fairly confident we
> get away with it in the kernel, and userland normally just uses linked
> load/store instructions for atomicity which works fine.

Urgh.. sounds like way 'fun' for you ;-)