An IRC discussion uncovered many conflicting opinions on what types
of data may be atomically loaded and stored. This commit therefore
calls this out the official set: pointers, longs, ints, and chars (but
not shorts). This commit also gives some examples of compiler mischief
that can thwart atomicity.
Please note that this discussion is relevant to !SMP kernels if
CONFIG_PREEMPT=y: preemption can cause almost as much trouble as can SMP.
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Richard Henderson <rth@twiddle.net>
Cc: Ivan Kokshaysky <ink@jurassic.park.msu.ru>
Cc: Matt Turner <mattst88@gmail.com>
Cc: Russell King <linux@arm.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Haavard Skinnemoen <hskinnemoen@gmail.com>
Cc: Hans-Christian Egtvedt <egtvedt@samfundet.no>
Cc: Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org>
Cc: Mikael Starvik <starvik@axis.com>
Cc: Jesper Nilsson <jesper.nilsson@axis.com>
Cc: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Cc: Yoshinori Sato <ysato@users.sourceforge.jp>
Cc: Richard Kuo <rkuo@codeaurora.org>
Cc: Jes Sorensen <jes@sgi.com>
Cc: Hirokazu Takata <takata@linux-m32r.org>
Cc: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>
Cc: Michal Simek <monstr@monstr.eu>
Cc: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
Cc: Koichi Yasutake <yasutake.koichi@jp.panasonic.com>
Cc: Jonas Bonn <jonas@southpole.se>
Cc: Kyle McMartin <kyle@mcmartin.ca>
Cc: Helge Deller <deller@gmx.de>
Cc: "James E.J. Bottomley" <jejb@parisc-linux.org>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com>
Cc: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com>
Cc: Chen Liqin <liqin.chen@sunplusct.com>
Cc: Lennox Wu <lennox.wu@gmail.com>
Cc: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>
Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: Chris Metcalf <cmetcalf@tilera.com>
Cc: Jeff Dike <jdike@addtoit.com>
Cc: Richard Weinberger <richard@nod.at>
Cc: Guan Xuetao <gxt@mprc.pku.edu.cn>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Chris Zankel <chris@zankel.net>
182dd4b277
