Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC 20/38] tcg/i386: implement fences

[Emilio G. Cota]

On Sun, Aug 23, 2015 at 18:32:51 -0700, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> 
> 
> On 23/08/2015 17:23, Emilio G. Cota wrote:
> > +    case INDEX_op_fence_load:
> > +        tcg_out_fence(s, 0xe8);
> > +        break;
> > +    case INDEX_op_fence_full:
> > +        tcg_out_fence(s, 0xf0);
> > +        break;
> > +    case INDEX_op_fence_store:
> > +        tcg_out_fence(s, 0xf8);
> > +        break;
> > +
> 
> lfence and sfence are not needed in generated code; all loads are
> acquires and all stores are release on x86.

lfence and sfence here serve two purposes:

1) Template for other architectures
2) x86 code does sometimes have lfence/sfence (e.g. movntq+sfence),
   so I guessed they should remain in the translated code.
   If on x86 we always ignore the Write-Combining from the
   guest, maybe we could claim the l/sfence pair here is really unnecessary.
   I'm no x86 expert so for a first stab I decided to put them there.
   
   I didn't intend to translate say *all* PPC/ARM load barriers
   into lfences when generating x86, which is I think your point.

> Also, on targets that do not have MFENCE you want to generate something
> like "lock addl $0, (%esp)".

Good point, will fix.

Thanks,

                Emilio