locking/Documentation: Clarify failed cmpxchg() memory ordering semantics

A failed cmpxchg does not provide any memory ordering guarantees, a
property that is used to optimise the cmpxchg implementations on Alpha,
PowerPC and arm64.

This patch updates atomic_ops.txt and memory-barriers.txt to reflect
this.

Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Davidlohr Bueso <dave@stgolabs.net>
Cc: Douglas Hatch <doug.hatch@hp.com>
Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Scott J Norton <scott.norton@hp.com>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Waiman Long <waiman.long@hp.com>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20150716151006.GH26390@arm.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/atomic_ops.txt b/Documentation/atomic_ops.txt
index dab6da3382d9..b19fc34efdb1 100644
--- a/Documentation/atomic_ops.txt
+++ b/Documentation/atomic_ops.txt
@@ -266,7 +266,9 @@ with the given old and new values. Like all atomic_xxx operations,
 atomic_cmpxchg will only satisfy its atomicity semantics as long as all
 other accesses of *v are performed through atomic_xxx operations.
 
-atomic_cmpxchg must provide explicit memory barriers around the operation.
+atomic_cmpxchg must provide explicit memory barriers around the operation,
+although if the comparison fails then no memory ordering guarantees are
+required.
 
 The semantics for atomic_cmpxchg are the same as those defined for 'cas'
 below.