1 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/arch/ia64/include/uapi/asm/cmpxchg.h b/arch/ia64/include/uapi/asm/cmpxchg.h
index 4f37dbbb8640..f35109b1d907 100644
--- a/arch/ia64/include/uapi/asm/cmpxchg.h
+++ b/arch/ia64/include/uapi/asm/cmpxchg.h
@@ -118,6 +118,15 @@ extern long ia64_cmpxchg_called_with_bad_pointer(void);
 #define cmpxchg_rel(ptr, o, n)  \
         ia64_cmpxchg(rel, (ptr), (o), (n), sizeof(*(ptr)))
 
+/*
+ * Worse still - early processor implementations actually just ignored
+ * the acquire/release and did a full fence all the time.  Unfortunately
+ * this meant a lot of badly written code that used .acq when they really
+ * wanted .rel became legacy out in the wild - so when we made a cpu
+ * that strictly did the .acq or .rel ... all that code started breaking - so
+ * we had to back-pedal and keep the "legacy" behavior of a full fence :-(
+ */
+
 /* for compatibility with other platforms: */
 #define cmpxchg(ptr, o, n)      cmpxchg_acq((ptr), (o), (n))
 #define cmpxchg64(ptr, o, n)    cmpxchg_acq((ptr), (o), (n))