STORE *(A + 4) = Y; STORE *A = X;
STORE {*A, *(A + 4) } = {X, Y};
+And there are anti-guarantees:
+
+ (*) These guarantees do not apply to bitfields, because compilers often
+ generate code to modify these using non-atomic read-modify-write
+ sequences. Do not attempt to use bitfields to synchronize parallel
+ algorithms.
+
+ (*) Even in cases where bitfields are protected by locks, all fields
+ in a given bitfield must be protected by one lock. If two fields
+ in a given bitfield are protected by different locks, the compiler's
+ non-atomic read-modify-write sequences can cause an update to one
+ field to corrupt the value of an adjacent field.
+
+ (*) These guarantees apply only to properly aligned and sized scalar
+ variables. "Properly sized" currently means variables that are
+ the same size as "char", "short", "int" and "long". "Properly
+ aligned" means the natural alignment, thus no constraints for
+ "char", two-byte alignment for "short", four-byte alignment for
+ "int", and either four-byte or eight-byte alignment for "long",
+ on 32-bit and 64-bit systems, respectively. Note that these
+ guarantees were introduced into the C11 standard, so beware when
+ using older pre-C11 compilers (for example, gcc 4.6). The portion
+ of the standard containing this guarantee is Section 3.14, which
+ defines "memory location" as follows:
+
+ memory location
+ either an object of scalar type, or a maximal sequence
+ of adjacent bit-fields all having nonzero width
+
+ NOTE 1: Two threads of execution can update and access
+ separate memory locations without interfering with
+ each other.
+
+ NOTE 2: A bit-field and an adjacent non-bit-field member
+ are in separate memory locations. The same applies
+ to two bit-fields, if one is declared inside a nested
+ structure declaration and the other is not, or if the two
+ are separated by a zero-length bit-field declaration,
+ or if they are separated by a non-bit-field member
+ declaration. It is not safe to concurrently update two
+ bit-fields in the same structure if all members declared
+ between them are also bit-fields, no matter what the
+ sizes of those intervening bit-fields happen to be.
+
=========================
WHAT ARE MEMORY BARRIERS?
However, they do -not- guarantee any other sort of ordering:
Not prior loads against later loads, nor prior stores against
later anything. If you need these other forms of ordering,
- use smb_rmb(), smp_wmb(), or, in the case of prior stores and
+ use smp_rmb(), smp_wmb(), or, in the case of prior stores and
later loads, smp_mb().
(*) If both legs of the "if" statement begin with identical stores
operations" subsection for information on where to use these.
+ (*) dma_wmb();
+ (*) dma_rmb();
+
+ These are for use with consistent memory to guarantee the ordering
+ of writes or reads of shared memory accessible to both the CPU and a
+ DMA capable device.
+
+ For example, consider a device driver that shares memory with a device
+ and uses a descriptor status value to indicate if the descriptor belongs
+ to the device or the CPU, and a doorbell to notify it when new
+ descriptors are available:
+
+ if (desc->status != DEVICE_OWN) {
+ /* do not read data until we own descriptor */
+ dma_rmb();
+
+ /* read/modify data */
+ read_data = desc->data;
+ desc->data = write_data;
+
+ /* flush modifications before status update */
+ dma_wmb();
+
+ /* assign ownership */
+ desc->status = DEVICE_OWN;
+
+ /* force memory to sync before notifying device via MMIO */
+ wmb();
+
+ /* notify device of new descriptors */
+ writel(DESC_NOTIFY, doorbell);
+ }
+
+ The dma_rmb() allows us guarantee the device has released ownership
+ before we read the data from the descriptor, and he dma_wmb() allows
+ us to guarantee the data is written to the descriptor before the device
+ can see it now has ownership. The wmb() is needed to guarantee that the
+ cache coherent memory writes have completed before attempting a write to
+ the cache incoherent MMIO region.
+
+ See Documentation/DMA-API.txt for more information on consistent memory.
+
MMIO WRITE BARRIER
------------------