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 <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
d99c4f6b13