Re: [Xen-devel] RFC: 32 bits as smallest atomic size.

[Hollis Blanchard <hollisb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

[Resending to really correct list this time.]

On Fri, 2005-03-25 at 21:43 +0000, Keir Fraser wrote:
> I expect we can fix that up in the ppc macros: if the atomic access is 
> sub-32-bit aligned then round the address down to 32-bit boundary and 
> do a 32-bit cmpxchg.

>From a quick survey of Linux headers, it seems at least the following
architectures only support 4/8-byte atomic instructions: ppc(64),
sparc(64), parisc, mips, alpha.

The following architectures support 1/2-byte atomic instructions:
x86(64), ia64.

Since so many architectures don't allow non-word-sized accesses (a link
error is triggered), common Linux code does not make such calls. Could
we please have the same policy?

Right now there is a single problematic cmpxchg user, grant_entry_t, and
the impact of the fix is tiny (make the 'flags' member 4 bytes). Is that
too large an inconvenience?

-- 
Hollis Blanchard
IBM Linux Technology Center


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