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Message-ID: <20180419213254.GO3094@brightrain.aerifal.cx>
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2018 17:32:54 -0400
From: Rich Felker <dalias@...c.org>
To: musl@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] arm: enable a_ll and a_sc helper functions
when building for ARMv6T2
On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 01:38:51PM -0700, Andre McCurdy wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 12:25 PM, Rich Felker <dalias@...c.org> wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 12:14:51PM -0700, Andre McCurdy wrote:
> >> On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 9:38 AM, Rich Felker <dalias@...c.org> wrote:
> >> > On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 06:51:44PM -0700, Andre McCurdy wrote:
> >> >> ARMv6 cores with support for Thumb2 can take advantage of the "ldrex"
> >> >> and "strex" based implementations of a_ll and a_sc.
> >> >> ---
> >> >> arch/arm/atomic_arch.h | 2 +-
> >> >> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> >> >>
> >> >> diff --git a/arch/arm/atomic_arch.h b/arch/arm/atomic_arch.h
> >> >> index 5ff1be1..62458b4 100644
> >> >> --- a/arch/arm/atomic_arch.h
> >> >> +++ b/arch/arm/atomic_arch.h
> >> >> @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ extern uintptr_t __attribute__((__visibility__("hidden")))
> >> >> __a_cas_ptr, __a_barrier_ptr;
> >> >>
> >> >> #if ((__ARM_ARCH_6__ || __ARM_ARCH_6K__ || __ARM_ARCH_6KZ__ || __ARM_ARCH_6ZK__) && !__thumb__) \
> >> >> - || __ARM_ARCH_7A__ || __ARM_ARCH_7R__ || __ARM_ARCH >= 7
> >> >> + || __ARM_ARCH_6T2__ || __ARM_ARCH_7A__ || __ARM_ARCH_7R__ || __ARM_ARCH >= 7
> >> >>
> >> >> #define a_ll a_ll
> >> >> static inline int a_ll(volatile int *p)
> >> >
> >> > I'm merging this along with the others, but there is some concern that
> >> > our use of a_ll/a_sc might not actually be valid on most or all of the
> >> > archs we currently use it on. Depending on how this turns out it might
> >> > all be removed at some later time.
> >>
> >> That sound ominous. What's the concern?
> >
> > Originally ARM didn't document it, but reportedly it's now documented
> > somewhere that the ll and sc operations have certain strong conditions
> > on how they're used. RISC-V's and maybe other archs' also have similar
> > conditions. They're something along the lines of (from my memory):
> >
> > - no intervening loads or stores between ll and sc
> > - limit on number of instructions between ll and sc
> > - no jumps or branches between ll and sc
> >
> > and there is no way to guarantee these kinds of conditions when the
> > compiler is free to move the ll and sc asm blocks independently.
> >
> > From a practical standpoint, it looks like the conditions are overly
> > conservative and designed to allow cpu implementations with very bad
> > cache designs (direct-mapped, small, etc.) but they may turn out to be
> > relevant so we need to evaluate if we need to care about this...
>
> Thanks. Google found the following:
>
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10812442/arm-ll-sc-exclusive-access-by-register-width-or-cache-line-width
> http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.dht0008a/CJAGCFAF.html
>
> It takes some digesting, but I don't see an immediate red flag.
>
> An instruction sequence which Interleaves two ll sc sequences would
> seem to be an issue, but we don't do that.
>
> A uniprocessor system running without data caching could be problem
> (implementation dependent). But if I read correctly, the failure mode
> would be that sc would always fail and therefore the system would
> deadlock, so it won't be a subtle failure?
That sounds right.
Rich
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