RE: [PATCH v3] tools/memory-model: Add extra ordering for locks and remove it for ordinary release/acquire

[Alan Stern]

On Wed, 11 Jul 2018, David Laight wrote:

> > From: Alan Stern
> > Sent: 10 July 2018 19:18
> > More than one kernel developer has expressed the opinion that the LKMM
> > should enforce ordering of writes by locking. In other words, given
> > the following code:
> >
> > WRITE_ONCE(x, 1);
> > spin_unlock(&s):
> > spin_lock(&s);
> > WRITE_ONCE(y, 1);
> >
> > the stores to x and y should be propagated in order to all other CPUs,
> > even though those other CPUs might not access the lock s. In terms of
> > the memory model, this means expanding the cumul-fence relation.
> 
> The usual 'elephant in the room' is Alpha.
> I don't claim to understand the alpha memory model but it wouldn't
> surprise me if the above is impossible to implement on alpha.

It's not impossible, since Alpha does have a full memory barrier 
instruction (and the implementation uses it).

Alan