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authorPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>2008-02-06 01:37:25 -0800
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@woody.linux-foundation.org>2008-02-06 10:41:06 -0800
commitd99c4f6b13b3149bc83703ab1493beaeaaaf8a2d (patch)
tree32e09d76cb46755d7420e6ad9a6e0802dab47963 /include
parentba6f867f114760d4e43f0f93abe280ee0a0d696e (diff)
downloadlinux-d99c4f6b13b3149bc83703ab1493beaeaaaf8a2d.tar.gz
Remove rcu_assign_pointer() penalty for NULL pointers
The rcu_assign_pointer() primitive currently unconditionally executes a
memory barrier, even when a NULL pointer is being assigned.  This has lead
some to avoid using rcu_assign_pointer() for NULL pointers, which loses the
self-documenting advantages of rcu_assign_pointer() This patch uses
__builtin_const_p() to omit needless memory barriers for NULL-pointer
assignments at compile time with no runtime penalty, as discussed in the
following thread:

	http://www.mail-archive.com/netdev@vger.kernel.org/msg54852.html

Tested on x86_64 and ppc64, also compiled the four cases (NULL/non-NULL
and const/non-const) with gcc version 4.1.2, and hand-checked the
assembly output.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'include')
-rw-r--r--include/linux/rcupdate.h11
1 files changed, 7 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/include/linux/rcupdate.h b/include/linux/rcupdate.h
index d32c14de270e..37a642c54871 100644
--- a/include/linux/rcupdate.h
+++ b/include/linux/rcupdate.h
@@ -174,10 +174,13 @@ struct rcu_head {
  * code.
  */
 
-#define rcu_assign_pointer(p, v)	({ \
-						smp_wmb(); \
-						(p) = (v); \
-					})
+#define rcu_assign_pointer(p, v) \
+	({ \
+		if (!__builtin_constant_p(v) || \
+		    ((v) != NULL)) \
+			smp_wmb(); \
+		(p) = (v); \
+	})
 
 /**
  * synchronize_sched - block until all CPUs have exited any non-preemptive