From d99c4f6b13b3149bc83703ab1493beaeaaaf8a2d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Paul E. McKenney" Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2008 01:37:25 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] 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 Acked-by: Herbert Xu Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- include/linux/rcupdate.h | 11 +++++++---- 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/include/linux/rcupdate.h b/include/linux/rcupdate.h index d32c14d..37a642c 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 -- 2.7.4