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ARM: 6194/1: change definition of cpu_relax() for ARM11MPCore
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Linux expects that if a CPU modifies a memory location, then that
modification will eventually become visible to other CPUs in the system.

On an ARM11MPCore processor, loads are prioritised over stores so it is
possible for a store operation to be postponed if a polling loop immediately
follows it. If the variable being polled indirectly depends on the outstanding
store [for example, another CPU may be polling the variable that is pending
modification] then there is the potential for deadlock if interrupts are
disabled. This deadlock occurs in the KGDB testsuire when executing on an
SMP ARM11MPCore configuration.

This patch changes the definition of cpu_relax() to smp_mb() for ARMv6 cores,
forcing a flushing of the write buffer on SMP systems before the next load
takes place. If the Kernel is not compiled for SMP support, this will expand
to a barrier() as before.

Acked-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Russell King <rmk+kernel@arm.linux.org.uk>
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Will Deacon authored and Russell King committed Jul 1, 2010
1 parent cc9897d commit 534be1d
Showing 1 changed file with 4 additions and 0 deletions.
4 changes: 4 additions & 0 deletions arch/arm/include/asm/processor.h
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -91,7 +91,11 @@ extern void release_thread(struct task_struct *);

unsigned long get_wchan(struct task_struct *p);

#if __LINUX_ARM_ARCH__ == 6
#define cpu_relax() smp_mb()
#else
#define cpu_relax() barrier()
#endif

/*
* Create a new kernel thread
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