pgsql: Further marginal hacking on generic atomic ops.

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: pgsql-committers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: pgsql: Further marginal hacking on generic atomic ops.
Date: 2017-09-07 12:50:06
Message-ID: E1dpwFy-0007NY-L9@gemulon.postgresql.org
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Further marginal hacking on generic atomic ops.

In the generic atomic ops that rely on a loop around a CAS primitive,
there's no need to force the initial read of the "old" value to be atomic.
In the typically-rare case that we get a torn value, that simply means
that the first CAS attempt will fail; but it will update "old" to the
atomically-read value, so the next attempt has a chance of succeeding.
It was already being done that way in pg_atomic_exchange_u64_impl(),
but let's duplicate the approach in the rest.

(Given the current coding of the pg_atomic_read functions, this change
is a no-op anyway on popular platforms; it only makes a difference where
pg_atomic_read_u64_impl() is implemented as a CAS.)

In passing, also remove unnecessary take-a-pointer-and-dereference-it
coding in the pg_atomic_read functions. That seems to have been based
on a misunderstanding of what the C standard requires. What actually
matters is that the pointer be declared as pointing to volatile, which
it is.

I don't believe this will change the assembly code at all on x86
platforms (even ignoring the likelihood that these implementations
get overridden by others); but it may help on less-mainstream CPUs.

Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/13707.1504718238@sss.pgh.pa.us

Branch
------
master

Details
-------
https://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/bfea92563c511931bc98163ec70ba2809b14afa1

Modified Files
--------------
src/include/port/atomics/generic.h | 30 ++++++++++++++----------------
1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-)

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