Re: [Qemu-devel] Java volatile vs. C11 seq_cst (was Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] add a header file for atomic operations)

[Paul E. McKenney]

On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 09:11:36AM +0200, Torvald Riegel wrote:
> On Tue, 2013-06-18 at 18:53 -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 05:37:42PM +0200, Torvald Riegel wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2013-06-18 at 07:50 -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > > > First, I am not a fan of SC, mostly because there don't seem to be many
> > > > (any?) production-quality algorithms that need SC.  But if you really
> > > > want to take a parallel-programming trip back to the 1980s, let's go!  
> > > > ;-)
> > > 
> > > Dekker-style mutual exclusion is useful for things like read-mostly
> > > multiple-reader single-writer locks, or similar "asymmetric" cases of
> > > synchronization.  SC fences are needed for this.
> > 
> > They definitely need Power hwsync rather than lwsync, but they need
> > fewer fences than would be emitted by slavishly following either of the
> > SC recipes for Power.  (Another example needing store-to-load ordering
> > is hazard pointers.)
> 
> The C++11 seq-cst fence expands to hwsync; combined with a relaxed
> store / load, that should be minimal.  Or are you saying that on Power,
> there is a weaker HW barrier available that still constrains store-load
> reordering sufficiently?

Your example use of seq-cst fence is a very good one for this example.
But most people I have talked to think of C++11 SC as being SC atomic
accesses, and SC atomics would get you a bunch of redundant fences
in this example -- some but not all of which could be easily optimized
away.

                                                        Thanx, Paul