Doc. No.: | WG14/N1768 | |
---|---|---|
Date: | 2013-10-21 | |
Related to: | WG21/N3710, N3786, LWG 2265 | |
Reply to: | Hans-J. Boehm | Clark Nelson |
Phone: | +1-650-857-3406 | +1-503-712-8433 |
Email: | Hans.Boehm@hp.com | clark.nelson@intel.com |
We argued in WG21/N3710 that the current attempt prohibit out-of-thin-air results
in 7.17.3p13 is both insufficient, in that it leaves it largely impossible to reason
about programs with memory_order_relaxed
, and seriously harmful, in
that it arguably disallows all reasonable implementations of memory_order_relaxed
on architectures like ARM and POWER. This proposal attempts to address the latter
"seriously harmful" part for C, without addressing the "insufficient" part, possibly
along the lines of N3710.
This proposal thus eliminates some amount of complicated standardese that we actually want vendors like ARM and IBM to ignore.
There is no consensus in WG21/SG1 for a more extensive proposal, such as that in N3710, at this time (i.e. in time for C++14).
This removes the current badly formulated requirement, and instead promotes the existing note discouraging "out-of-thin-air" results to normative encouragment.
The core problem here is that we do not know (after 10 years of failed attempts, originally in a Java context) how to precisely state this requirement without strengthening it so that it impacts code performance. (See N3710 for details.) Thus it remains of little use to anyone trying to formulate a precise correctness argument. It is roughly analogous to our current statements about progress guarantees, which are also phrased as normative encouragement, in large part because they would be extremely difficult to make precise while remaining implementable.
Change 7.17.3p13 as follows:
An atomic store shall only store a value that has been computed from constants and program input values by a finite sequence of program evaluations, such that each evaluation observes the values of variables as computed by the last prior assignment in the sequence.256) The ordering of evaluations in this sequence shall be such that
If an evaluation B observes a value computed by A in a different thread, then B does not happen before A.If an evaluation A is included in the sequence, then all evaluations that assign to the same variable and happen before A are also included.Recommended practice
Implementations should ensure that no “out-of-thin-air” values are computed that circularly depend on their own computation.
Change 7.17.3p14 as follows:
NOTE 3 The second requirement disallows “out-of-thin-air”, or “speculative” stores of atomics when relaxed atomics are used. Since unordered operations are involved, evaluations may appear in this sequence out of thread order. For example, withx
andy
initially zero,// Thread 1: r1 = atomic_load_explicit(&y, memory_order_relaxed); atomic_store_explicit(&x, r1, memory_order_relaxed); // Thread 2: r2 = atomic_load_explicit(&x, memory_order_relaxed); atomic_store_explicit(&y, 42, memory_order_relaxed);
is allowed to producer1 == 42 && r2 == 42
. The sequence of evaluations justifying this consists of:atomic_store_explicit(&y, 42, memory_order_relaxed); r1 = atomic_load_explicit(&y, memory_order_relaxed); atomic_store_explicit(&x, r1, memory_order_relaxed); r2 = atomic_load_explicit(&x, memory_order_relaxed);
On the other hand,NOTE 3 For example, withx
andy
initially zero,// Thread 1: r1 = atomic_load_explicit(&y, memory_order_relaxed); atomic_store_explicit(&x, r1, memory_order_relaxed); // Thread 2: r2 = atomic_load_explicit(&x, memory_order_relaxed); atomic_store_explicit(&y, r2, memory_order_relaxed);
is not allowed toshould not producer1 == 42 && r2 == 42
, since the store of 42 toy
is only possible if the store tox
stores 42, which circularly depends on the store toy
storing 42. Note that without this restriction, such an execution is possible.since there is no sequence of evaluations that results in the computation of 42. In the absence of “relaxed” operations and read-modify-write operations with weaker thanmemory_order_acq_rel
ordering, the second requirement has no impact.
Change 7.17.3p15 as follows:
Recommended practiceThe
requirements do not forbidrecommendation similarly disallowsr1 == 42 && r2 == 42
in the following example, with x and y again initially zero:// Thread 1: r1 = atomic_load_explicit(&x, memory_order_relaxed); if (r1 == 42) atomic_store_explicit(&y,r142, memory_order_relaxed); // Thread 2: r2 = atomic_load_explicit(&y, memory_order_relaxed); if (r2 == 42) atomic_store_explicit(&x, 42, memory_order_relaxed);
However, this is not useful behavior, and implementations should not allow it.