Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 1/2] atomics: do not use __atomic primitives for RCU atomics

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 21/05/2016 22:42, Emilio G. Cota wrote:
> Commit a0aa44b4 ("include/qemu/atomic.h: default to __atomic functions")
> set all atomics to default (on recent GCC versions) to __atomic primitives.
> 
> In the process, the atomic_rcu_read/set were converted to implement
> consume/release semantics, respectively. This is inefficient; for
> correctness and maximum performance we only need an smp_barrier_depends
> for reads, and an smp_wmb for writes. Fix it by using the original
> definition of these two primitives for all compilers.

Indeed most compilers implement consume the same as acquire, which is
inefficient.  However, isn't in practice atomic_thread_fence(release) +
atomic_store(relaxed) the same as atomic_store(release)?

Thanks,

Paolo