gettimeofday seconds rollover problem?

[Eric Norum]

On Feb 24, 2006, at 1:09 PM, Till Straumann wrote:


>
> Not sure I understand exactly what you mean. Assume a (global)  
> variable X
> that is not touched by an ISR. If some operation does
>
>  _Thread_Disable_dispatch();
>  X++;
>  _Thread_Enable_dispatch();
>
> Then, for sure, X is not modified by any ISR. However, the compiler  
> could
> still move X outside of the safe region (because the dispatch- 
> disable/enable
> ops are inlines) so it effectively looks like this
>
>  X++
>  _Thread_Disable_dispatch();
>  _Thread_Enable_dispatch();
>
> with obvious consequences if a context switch occurs while X++ is  
> in progress.

Yes, and the "memory" barrier will prevent this which is why I agree  
that it should be added to the _Thread_Disable_dispatch and  
_Thread_Enable_dispatch macros/inlines.

Declaring X as volatile is orthogonal to the "memory" barrier issue.
If the X in the above example is used by multiple threads then it  
needs to be volatile -- this is likely given the above example code,  
but has nothing to do with the presence or absence of the memory  
barriers.
If the X is used by only one thread then it does not need to be  
volatile.

-- 
Eric Norum <norume at aps.anl.gov>
Advanced Photon Source
Argonne National Laboratory
(630) 252-4793