Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC v2 PATCH 01/13] Introduce TCGOpcode for memory barrier

[Pranith Kumar]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2016 at 5:18 PM, Richard Henderson <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Hum.  That does seem helpful-ish.  But I'm not certain how helpful it is to
> complicate the helper functions even further.
>
> What if we have tcg_canonicalize_memop (or some such) split off the barriers
> into separate opcodes.  E.g.
>
> MO_BAR_LD_B = 32        // prevent earlier loads from crossing current op
> MO_BAR_ST_B = 64        // prevent earlier stores from crossing current op
> MO_BAR_LD_A = 128       // prevent later loads from crossing current op
> MO_BAR_ST_A = 256       // prevent later stores from crossing current op
> MO_BAR_LDST_B = MO_BAR_LD_B | MO_BAR_ST_B
> MO_BAR_LDST_A = MO_BAR_LD_A | MO_BAR_ST_A
> MO_BAR_MASK = MO_BAR_LDST_B | MO_BAR_LDST_A
>
> // Match Sparc MEMBAR as the most flexible host.
> TCG_BAR_LD_LD = 1       // #LoadLoad barrier
> TCG_BAR_ST_LD = 2       // #StoreLoad barrier
> TCG_BAR_LD_ST = 4       // #LoadStore barrier
> TCG_BAR_ST_ST = 8       // #StoreStore barrier
> TCG_BAR_SYNC  = 64      // SEQ_CST barrier

I really like this format. I would also like to add to the frontend:

MO_BAR_ACQUIRE
MO_BAR_RELEASE

and the following to the backend:

TCG_BAR_ACQUIRE
TCG_BAR_RELEASE

since these are one-way barriers and the previous barrier types do not
cover them.

>
> where
>
>   tcg_gen_qemu_ld_i32(x, y, i, m | MO_BAR_LD_BEFORE | MO_BAR_ST_AFTER)
>
> emits
>
>   mb            TCG_BAR_LD_LD
>   qemu_ld_i32   x, y, i, m
>   mb            TCG_BAR_LD_ST
>
> We can then add an optimization pass which folds barriers with no memory
> operations in between, so that duplicates are eliminated.
>

Yes, folding/eliding these barriers in an optimization pass sounds
like a good idea.

Thanks,
-- 
Pranith