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From: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
To: torvalds@linux-foundation.org,
	Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>,
	Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>,
	linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: [rfc] SLOB memory ordering issue
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:34:12 +1100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <200810160334.13082.nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au> (raw)

I think I see a possible memory ordering problem with SLOB:
In slab caches with constructors, the constructor is run
before returning the object to caller, with no memory barrier
afterwards.

Now there is nothing that indicates the _exact_ behaviour
required here. Is it at all reasonable to expect ->ctor() to
be visible to all CPUs and not just the allocating CPU?

SLAB and SLUB don't appear to have this problem. Of course,
they have per-CPU fastpath queues, so _can_ have effectively
exactly the same ordering issue if the object was brought
back into the "initialized" state before being freed, rather
than by ->ctor(). However in that case, it is at least
kind of visible to the caller.

Anyone care or think it is a problem? Should we just document
that ->ctor doesn't imply any barriers? Better ideas?

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             reply	other threads:[~2008-10-15 16:34 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 20+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2008-10-15 16:34 Nick Piggin [this message]
2008-10-15 16:46 ` Nick Piggin
2008-10-15 16:54 ` Matt Mackall
2008-10-15 17:10   ` Nick Piggin
2008-10-15 17:33     ` Linus Torvalds
2008-10-15 17:36       ` Linus Torvalds
2008-10-15 17:58         ` Matt Mackall
2008-10-15 17:45       ` Nick Piggin
2008-10-15 18:03         ` Linus Torvalds
2008-10-15 18:12           ` Nick Piggin
2008-10-15 18:19             ` Matt Mackall
2008-10-15 18:35               ` Nick Piggin
2008-10-15 18:43                 ` Linus Torvalds
2008-10-15 19:19                   ` Nick Piggin
2008-10-15 19:47                     ` Linus Torvalds
2008-10-15 18:29             ` Linus Torvalds
2008-10-15 18:06     ` Nick Piggin
2008-10-15 18:26       ` Linus Torvalds
2008-10-15 18:50         ` Nick Piggin
2008-10-17 20:29       ` Linus Torvalds

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