Guys, please let's avoid top-post.

You are both not replying to each other:

1/ Dekel mentioned the IBM doc but Chao did not argue about
the lack of IO protection with lwsync.
We assume that rte_mb should protect any access including IO.

2/ Chao asked about the semantic of the barrier used in mlx5 code,
but Dekel did not reply about the semantic: are we protecting
IO or general memory access?


19/03/2019 11:05, Dekel Peled:
> Hi,
> 
> For ppc, rte_io_mb() is defined as rte_mb(), which is defined as asm sync.
> According to comments in arch/ppc_64/rte_atomic.h, rte_wmb() and rte_rmb() are the same as rte_mb(), for store and load respectively.
> My patch propose to define rte_wmb() and rte_rmb() as asm sync, like rte_mb(), since using lwsync is incorrect for them.
> 
> Regards,
> Dekel
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Chao Zhu <chaozhu@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2019 5:24 AM
> > To: Dekel Peled <dekelp@mellanox.com>
> > Cc: Yongseok Koh <yskoh@mellanox.com>; Shahaf Shuler
> > <shahafs@mellanox.com>; dev@dpdk.org; Ori Kam <orika@mellanox.com>;
> > Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net>; stable@dpdk.org
> > Subject: RE: [PATCH] eal/ppc: remove fix of memory barrier for IBM POWER
> > 
> > Dekel£¬
> > 
> > To control the memory order for device memory, I think you should use
> > rte_io_mb() instead of rte_mb(). This will generate correct result. rte_wmb()
> > is used for system memory.
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Dekel Peled <dekelp@mellanox.com>
> > > Sent: Monday, March 18, 2019 8:58 PM
> > > To: chaozhu@linux.vnet.ibm.com
> > > Cc: yskoh@mellanox.com; shahafs@mellanox.com; dev@dpdk.org;
> > > orika@mellanox.com; thomas@monjalon.net; dekelp@mellanox.com;
> > > stable@dpdk.org
> > > Subject: [PATCH] eal/ppc: remove fix of memory barrier for IBM POWER
> > >
> > > From previous patch description: "to improve performance on PPC64, use
> > > light weight sync instruction instead of sync instruction."
> > >
> > > Excerpt from IBM doc [1], section "Memory barrier instructions":
> > > "The second form of the sync instruction is light-weight sync, or lwsync.
> > > This form is used to control ordering for storage accesses to system
> > > memory only. It does not create a memory barrier for accesses to device
> > memory."
> > >
> > > This patch removes the use of lwsync, so calls to rte_wmb() and
> > > rte_rmb() will provide correct memory barrier to ensure order of
> > > accesses to system memory and device memory.
> > >
> > > [1]
> > >
> > https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww
> > .
> > >
> > ibm.com%2Fdeveloperworks%2Fsystems%2Farticles%2Fpowerpc.html&amp
> > ;data=
> > >
> > 02%7C01%7Cdekelp%40mellanox.com%7C381426b6b9d042f776fa08d6ac1a5d
> > c5%7Ca
> > >
> > 652971c7d2e4d9ba6a4d149256f461b%7C0%7C0%7C636885626593364016&am
> > p;sdata
> > >
> > =wFYTcFX2A%2BMdtQMgtojTAtUOzqds7U5pypNS%2F2SoXUM%3D&amp;re
> > served=0
> > >
> > > Fixes: d23a6bd04d72 ("eal/ppc: fix memory barrier for IBM POWER")
> > > Cc: stable@dpdk.org
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: Dekel Peled <dekelp@mellanox.com>
> > > ---
> > >  lib/librte_eal/common/include/arch/ppc_64/rte_atomic.h | 8 --------
> > >  1 file changed, 8 deletions(-)
> > >
> > > diff --git a/lib/librte_eal/common/include/arch/ppc_64/rte_atomic.h
> > > b/lib/librte_eal/common/include/arch/ppc_64/rte_atomic.h
> > > index ce38350..797381c 100644
> > > --- a/lib/librte_eal/common/include/arch/ppc_64/rte_atomic.h
> > > +++ b/lib/librte_eal/common/include/arch/ppc_64/rte_atomic.h
> > > @@ -63,11 +63,7 @@
> > >   * Guarantees that the STORE operations generated before the barrier
> > >   * occur before the STORE operations generated after.
> > >   */
> > > -#ifdef RTE_ARCH_64
> > > -#define	rte_wmb() asm volatile("lwsync" : : : "memory")
> > > -#else
> > >  #define	rte_wmb() asm volatile("sync" : : : "memory")
> > > -#endif
> > >
> > >  /**
> > >   * Read memory barrier.
> > > @@ -75,11 +71,7 @@
> > >   * Guarantees that the LOAD operations generated before the barrier
> > >   * occur before the LOAD operations generated after.
> > >   */
> > > -#ifdef RTE_ARCH_64
> > > -#define	rte_rmb() asm volatile("lwsync" : : : "memory")
> > > -#else
> > >  #define	rte_rmb() asm volatile("sync" : : : "memory")
> > > -#endif
> > >
> > >  #define rte_smp_mb() rte_mb()