History log of /linux-master/tools/memory-model/Documentation/cheatsheet.txt
Revision Date Author Comments
# 0ce0c78e 04-Aug-2020 Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>

tools/memory-model: Expand the cheatsheet.txt notion of relaxed

This commit adds a key entry enumerating the various types of relaxed
operations. While in the area, it also renames the relaxed rows.

[ paulmck: Apply Boqun Feng feedback. ]
Acked-by: Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>


# bfd403bb 14-May-2018 Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>

tools/memory-order: Update the cheat-sheet to show that smp_mb__after_atomic() orders later RMW operations

The current cheat sheet does not claim that smp_mb__after_atomic()
orders later RMW atomic operations, which it must, at least against
earlier RMW atomic operations and whatever precedes them.

This commit therefore adds the needed "Y".

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Cc: akiyks@gmail.com
Cc: boqun.feng@gmail.com
Cc: dhowells@redhat.com
Cc: j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk
Cc: linux-arch@vger.kernel.org
Cc: luc.maranget@inria.fr
Cc: npiggin@gmail.com
Cc: parri.andrea@gmail.com
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1526340837-12222-6-git-send-email-paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>


# 35bb6ee6 14-May-2018 Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>

tools/memory-order: Improve key for SELF and SV

The key for "SELF" was missing completely and the key for "SV" was
a bit obtuse. This commit therefore adds a key for "SELF" and improves
the one for "SV".

Reported-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Cc: akiyks@gmail.com
Cc: boqun.feng@gmail.com
Cc: dhowells@redhat.com
Cc: j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk
Cc: linux-arch@vger.kernel.org
Cc: luc.maranget@inria.fr
Cc: npiggin@gmail.com
Cc: parri.andrea@gmail.com
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1526340837-12222-5-git-send-email-paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>


# a8391951 14-May-2018 Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>

tools/memory-model: Fix cheat sheet typo

"RWM" should be "RMW".

Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Cc: akiyks@gmail.com
Cc: boqun.feng@gmail.com
Cc: dhowells@redhat.com
Cc: j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk
Cc: linux-arch@vger.kernel.org
Cc: luc.maranget@inria.fr
Cc: npiggin@gmail.com
Cc: parri.andrea@gmail.com
Cc: stern@rowland.harvard.edu
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1526340837-12222-4-git-send-email-paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>


# bd5c0ba2 07-Mar-2018 Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>

tools/memory-model: Finish the removal of rb-dep, smp_read_barrier_depends(), and lockless_dereference()

Commit:

bf28ae562744 ("tools/memory-model: Remove rb-dep, smp_read_barrier_depends, and lockless_dereference")

was merged too early, while it was still in RFC form. This patch adds in
the missing pieces.

Akira pointed out some typos in the original patch, and he noted that
cheatsheet.txt should indicate that READ_ONCE() now implies an address
dependency. Andrea suggested documenting the relationship betwwen
unsuccessful RMW operations and address dependencies.

Andrea pointed out that the macro for rcu_dereference() in linux.def
should now use the "once" annotation instead of "deref". He also
suggested that the comments should mention commit:

5a8897cc7631 ("locking/atomics/alpha: Add smp_read_barrier_depends() to _release()/_relaxed() atomics")

... as an important precursor, and he contributed commit:

cb13b424e986 ("locking/xchg/alpha: Add unconditional memory barrier to cmpxchg()")

which is another prerequisite.

Suggested-by: Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com>
Suggested-by: Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
[ Fixed read_read_lock() typo reported by Akira. ]
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: boqun.feng@gmail.com
Cc: dhowells@redhat.com
Cc: j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk
Cc: linux-arch@vger.kernel.org
Cc: luc.maranget@inria.fr
Cc: npiggin@gmail.com
Cc: will.deacon@arm.com
Fixes: bf28ae562744 ("tools/memory-model: Remove rb-dep, smp_read_barrier_depends, and lockless_dereference")
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1520443660-16858-4-git-send-email-paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>


# bf28ae56 20-Feb-2018 Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>

tools/memory-model: Remove rb-dep, smp_read_barrier_depends, and lockless_dereference

Since commit 76ebbe78f739 ("locking/barriers: Add implicit
smp_read_barrier_depends() to READ_ONCE()") was merged for the 4.15
kernel, it has not been necessary to use smp_read_barrier_depends().
Similarly, commit 59ecbbe7b31c ("locking/barriers: Kill
lockless_dereference()") removed lockless_dereference() from the
kernel.

Since these primitives are no longer part of the kernel, they do not
belong in the Linux Kernel Memory Consistency Model. This patch
removes them, along with the internal rb-dep relation, and updates the
revelant documentation.

Signed-off-by: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: akiyks@gmail.com
Cc: boqun.feng@gmail.com
Cc: dhowells@redhat.com
Cc: j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk
Cc: linux-arch@vger.kernel.org
Cc: luc.maranget@inria.fr
Cc: nborisov@suse.com
Cc: npiggin@gmail.com
Cc: parri.andrea@gmail.com
Cc: will.deacon@arm.com
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1519169112-20593-12-git-send-email-paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>


# 1c27b644 18-Jan-2018 Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>

Automate memory-barriers.txt; provide Linux-kernel memory model

There is some reason to believe that Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
could use some help, and a major purpose of this patch is to provide
that help in the form of a design-time tool that can produce all valid
executions of a small fragment of concurrent Linux-kernel code, which is
called a "litmus test". This tool's functionality is roughly similar to
a full state-space search. Please note that this is a design-time tool,
not useful for regression testing. However, we hope that the underlying
Linux-kernel memory model will be incorporated into other tools capable
of analyzing large bodies of code for regression-testing purposes.

The main tool is herd7, together with the linux-kernel.bell,
linux-kernel.cat, linux-kernel.cfg, linux-kernel.def, and lock.cat files
added by this patch. The herd7 executable takes the other files as input,
and all of these files collectively define the Linux-kernel memory memory
model. A brief description of each of these other files is provided
in the README file. Although this tool does have its limitations,
which are documented in the README file, it does improve on the version
reported on in the LWN series (https://lwn.net/Articles/718628/ and
https://lwn.net/Articles/720550/) by supporting locking and arithmetic,
including a much wider variety of read-modify-write atomic operations.
Please note that herd7 is not part of this submission, but is freely
available from http://diy.inria.fr/sources/index.html (and via "git"
at https://github.com/herd/herdtools7).

A second tool is klitmus7, which converts litmus tests to loadable
kernel modules for direct testing. As with herd7, the klitmus7
code is freely available from http://diy.inria.fr/sources/index.html
(and via "git" at https://github.com/herd/herdtools7).

Of course, litmus tests are not always the best way to fully understand a
memory model, so this patch also includes Documentation/explanation.txt,
which describes the memory model in detail. In addition,
Documentation/recipes.txt provides example known-good and known-bad use
cases for those who prefer working by example.

This patch also includes a few sample litmus tests, and a great many
more litmus tests are available at https://github.com/paulmckrcu/litmus.

This patch was the result of a most excellent collaboration founded
by Jade Alglave and also including Alan Stern, Andrea Parri, and Luc
Maranget. For more details on the history of this collaboration, please
refer to the Linux-kernel memory model presentations at 2016 LinuxCon EU,
2016 Kernel Summit, 2016 Linux Plumbers Conference, 2017 linux.conf.au,
or 2017 Linux Plumbers Conference microconference. However, one aspect
of the history does bear repeating due to weak copyright tracking earlier
in this project, which extends back to early 2015. This weakness came
to light in late 2017 after an LKMM presentation by Paul in which an
audience member noted the similarity of some LKMM code to code in early
published papers. This prompted a copyright review.

From Alan Stern:

To say that the model was mine is not entirely accurate.
Pieces of it (especially the Scpv and Atomic axioms) were taken
directly from Jade's models. And of course the Happens-before
and Propagation relations and axioms were heavily based on
Jade and Luc's work, even though they weren't identical to the
earlier versions. Only the RCU portion was completely original.

. . .

One can make a much better case that I wrote the bulk of lock.cat.
However, it was inspired by Luc's earlier version (and still
shares some elements in common), and of course it benefited from
feedback and testing from all members of our group.

The model prior to Alan's was Luc Maranget's. From Luc:

I totally agree on Alan Stern's account of the linux kernel model
genesis. I thank him for his acknowledgments of my participation
to previous model drafts. I'd like to complete Alan Stern's
statement: any bell cat code I have written has its roots in
discussions with Jade Alglave and Paul McKenney. Moreover I
have borrowed cat and bell code written by Jade Alglave freely.

This copyright review therefore resulted in late adds to the copyright
statements of several files.

Discussion of v1 has raised several issues, which we do not believe should
block acceptance given that this level of change will be ongoing, just
as it has been with memory-barriers.txt:

o Under what conditions should ordering provided by pure locking
be seen by CPUs not holding the relevant lock(s)? In particular,
should the message-passing pattern be forbidden?

o Should examples involving C11 release sequences be forbidden?
Note that this C11 is still a moving target for this issue:
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2017/p0735r0.html

o Some details of the handling of internal dependencies for atomic
read-modify-write atomic operations are still subject to debate.

o Changes recently accepted into mainline greatly reduce the need
to handle DEC Alpha as a special case. These changes add an
smp_read_barrier_depends() to READ_ONCE(), thus causing Alpha
to respect ordering of dependent reads. If these changes stick,
the memory model can be simplified accordingly.

o Will changes be required to accommodate RISC-V?

Differences from v1:
(http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20171113184031.GA26302@linux.vnet.ibm.com)

o Add SPDX notations to .bell and .cat files, replacing
textual license statements.

o Add reference to upcoming ASPLOS paper to .bell and .cat files.

o Updated identifier names in .bell and .cat files to match those
used in the ASPLOS paper.

o Updates to READMEs and other documentation based on review
feedback.

o Added a memory-ordering cheatsheet.

o Update sigs to new Co-Developed-by and add acks and
reviewed-bys.

o Simplify rules detecting nested RCU read-side critical sections.

o Update copyright statements as noted above.

Co-Developed-by: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
Co-Developed-by: Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@gmail.com>
Co-Developed-by: Jade Alglave <j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk>
Co-Developed-by: Luc Maranget <luc.maranget@inria.fr>
Co-Developed-by: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
Signed-off-by: Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Jade Alglave <j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk>
Signed-off-by: Luc Maranget <luc.maranget@inria.fr>
Signed-off-by: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Acked-by: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>
Acked-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Acked-by: "Reshetova, Elena" <elena.reshetova@intel.com>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Acked-by: Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com>
Cc: <linux-arch@vger.kernel.org>