Re: Re: [PATCH] Use CC atomic builtins if available [was: Re: TAS patch for building on armel/armhf thumb] - Mailing list pgsql-bugs

Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com> writes:
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 05:09:11PM +0200, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
>> That is not sufficient on platforms with a weak memory model, like Itanium.

> Other processors may observe the lock as held after its release, but there's no
> correctness problem.

How weak is the memory model, exactly?

A correctness problem would ensue if out-of-order stores are possible,
ie other processors could observe the lock being freed (and then acquire
it) before seeing changes to shared variables that had been made while
holding the lock.

I'm a little dubious that this applies to Itanium, because I don't see
any memory fence instruction in the TAS macro.  If we needed one in
S_UNLOCK I'd rather expect there to be one in TAS as well.

            regards, tom lane