#. `Hotplug CPU`_
#. `Scheduler and RCU`_
#. `Tracing and RCU`_
+#. `Accesses to User Memory and RCU`_
#. `Energy Efficiency`_
#. `Scheduling-Clock Interrupts and RCU`_
#. `Memory Efficiency`_
used. The tracing folks both located the requirement and provided the
needed fix, so this surprise requirement was relatively painless.
+Accesses to User Memory and RCU
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+The kernel needs to access user-space memory, for example, to access data
+referenced by system-call parameters. The ``get_user()`` macro does this job.
+
+However, user-space memory might well be paged out, which means that
+``get_user()`` might well page-fault and thus block while waiting for the
+resulting I/O to complete. It would be a very bad thing for the compiler to
+reorder a ``get_user()`` invocation into an RCU read-side critical section.
+
+For example, suppose that the source code looked like this:
+
+ ::
+
+ 1 rcu_read_lock();
+ 2 p = rcu_dereference(gp);
+ 3 v = p->value;
+ 4 rcu_read_unlock();
+ 5 get_user(user_v, user_p);
+ 6 do_something_with(v, user_v);
+
+The compiler must not be permitted to transform this source code into
+the following:
+
+ ::
+
+ 1 rcu_read_lock();
+ 2 p = rcu_dereference(gp);
+ 3 get_user(user_v, user_p); // BUG: POSSIBLE PAGE FAULT!!!
+ 4 v = p->value;
+ 5 rcu_read_unlock();
+ 6 do_something_with(v, user_v);
+
+If the compiler did make this transformation in a ``CONFIG_PREEMPT=n`` kernel
+build, and if ``get_user()`` did page fault, the result would be a quiescent
+state in the middle of an RCU read-side critical section. This misplaced
+quiescent state could result in line 4 being a use-after-free access,
+which could be bad for your kernel's actuarial statistics. Similar examples
+can be constructed with the call to ``get_user()`` preceding the
+``rcu_read_lock()``.
+
+Unfortunately, ``get_user()`` doesn't have any particular ordering properties,
+and in some architectures the underlying ``asm`` isn't even marked
+``volatile``. And even if it was marked ``volatile``, the above access to
+``p->value`` is not volatile, so the compiler would not have any reason to keep
+those two accesses in order.
+
+Therefore, the Linux-kernel definitions of ``rcu_read_lock()`` and
+``rcu_read_unlock()`` must act as compiler barriers, at least for outermost
+instances of ``rcu_read_lock()`` and ``rcu_read_unlock()`` within a nested set
+of RCU read-side critical sections.
+
Energy Efficiency
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~