# Draft proposal for improved atomic operations for the Power ISA
-<https://bugs.libre-soc.org/show_bug.cgi?id=236>
+**NOTE THIS PROPOSAL IS NOT BEING SUBMITTED DUE TO
+DISCOVERY DURING INVESTIGATION THAT ATOMICS ARE DESIGNED
+FOR MASSIVE DISTRIBUTED CLUSTERS. SIGNIFICANT ADDITIONAL
+RESEARCH IS REQUIRED SO THIS PROPOSAL IS PUT ON HOLD
+UNTIL BUDGET IS AVAILABLE**
-## Motivation
+Links:
-Power ISA currently has some issues with its atomic operations support:
+* <https://bugs.libre-soc.org/show_bug.cgi?id=236>
+* [OpenCAPI spec](http://opencapi.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/OpenCAPI-TL.WGsec_.V3p1.2017Jan27.pdf) p47-49 for AMO section
+* [RISC-V A](https://github.com/riscv/riscv-isa-manual/blob/master/src/a.tex)
+* [[atomics/discussion]]
+* <http://www.rdrop.com/~paulmck/scalability/paper/N2745r.2011.03.04a.html>
-### Power ISA's current atomic operations are inefficient
-Implementations have a hard time recognizing existing atomic operations via macro-op fusion because they would often have to detect and fuse a large number of instructions, including branches.
+TODO:
-There is also the issue that PowerISA's memory fences are unnecessarily strong, particularly `isync` which is used for a lot of `acquire` and stronger fences. `isync` forces the cpu to do a full pipeline flush, which is unnecessary when all that is needed is a memory barrier.
+* investigate Power ISA 3.1 p1077 eh hint
+
+
+# Motivation
+
+Power ISA currently has some issues with its atomic operations support,
+which are exacerbated by 3D Data structure processing in 3D
+Shader Binaries needing
+of the order of 10^5 or greater atomic locks per second per SMP Core.
+
+## Power ISA's current atomic operations are inefficient
+
+Implementations have a hard time recognizing existing atomic operations
+via macro-op fusion because they would often have to detect and fuse a
+large number of instructions, including branches. This is contrary
+to the RISC paradigm.
+
+There is also the issue that PowerISA's memory fences are unnecessarily
+strong, particularly `isync` which is used for a lot of `acquire` and
+stronger fences. `isync` forces the cpu to do a full pipeline flush,
+which is unnecessary when all that is needed is a memory barrier.
`atomic_fetch_add_seq_cst` is 6 instructions including a loop:
+
```
# address in r4, addend in r5
sync
# output in r3
```
-`atomic_load_seq_cst` is 5 instructions, including a branch, and an unnecessarily-strong memory fence:
+`atomic_load_seq_cst` is 5 instructions, including a branch, and an
+unnecessarily-strong memory fence:
+
```
# address in r3
sync
# output in r3
```
-`atomic_compare_exchange_strong_seq_cst` is 7 instructions, including a loop with 2 branches, and an unnecessarily-strong memory fence:
+`atomic_compare_exchange_strong_seq_cst` is 7 instructions, including
+a loop with 2 branches, and an unnecessarily-strong memory fence:
+
```
# address in r4, compared-to value in r5, replacement value in r6
sync
# output loaded value in r3, store-occurred flag in cr0.eq
```
-`atomic_load_acquire` is 4 instructions, including a branch and an unnecessarily-strong memory fence:
+`atomic_load_acquire` is 4 instructions, including a branch and an
+unnecessarily-strong memory fence:
+
```
+# address in r3
ld 3, 0(3)
cmpw 0, 3, 3
bne- skip
isync
skip:
+# output in r3
```
Having single atomic operations is useful for implementations that want to send atomic operations to a shared cache since they can be more efficient to execute there, rather than having to move a whole cache block. Relying exclusively on
+TODO
-### Power ISA doesn't align well with C++11 atomics
+## Power ISA doesn't align well with C++11 atomics
[P0668R5: Revising the C++ memory model](https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2018/p0668r5.html):
> http://plv.mpi-sws.org/scfix/paper.pdf (which this discussion relies
> on heavily).
-### Power ISA's Atomic-Memory-Operations have issues
+## Power ISA's Atomic-Memory-Operations have issues
PowerISA v3.1 Book II section 4.5: Atomic Memory Operations
-They are still missing better fences, combined operation/fence instructions, and operations on 8/16-bit values, as well as issues with unnecessary restrictions:
+They are still missing better fences, combined operation/fence
+instructions, and operations on 8/16-bit values, as well as issues with
+unnecessary restrictions:
it has only 32-bit and 64-bit atomic operations.
-the operations it has that I was going to propose:
-fetch_add
-fetch_xor
-fetch_or
-fetch_and
-fetch_umax
-fetch_smax
-fetch_umin
-fetch_smin
-exchange
-
-as well as a few I wasn't going to propose (they seem less useful to me):
-compare-and-swap-not-equal
-fetch-and-increment-bounded
-fetch-and-increment-equal
-fetch-and-decrement-bounded
-store-twin
-
-The spec also basically says that the atomic memory operations are only intended for when you want to do atomic operations on memory, but don't want that memory to be loaded into your L1 cache.
-
-imho that restriction is specifically *not* wanted, because there are plenty of cases where atomic operations should happen in your L1 cache.
-
-I'd guess that part of why those atomic operations weren't included in gcc or clang as the default implementation of atomic operations (when the appropriate ISA feature is enabled) is because of that restriction.
-
-imho the cpu should be able to (but not required to) predict whether to send an atomic operation to L2-cache/L3-cache/etc./memory or to execute it directly in the L1 cache. The prediction could be based on how often that cache block was accessed from different cpus, e.g. by having a small saturating counter and a last-accessing-cpu field, where it would count how many times the same cpu accessed it in a row, sending it to the L1 cache if that's more than some limit, otherwise doing the operation in the L2/L3/etc.-cache if the limit wasn't reached or a different cpu tried to access it.
-
-# TODO: add list of proposed instructions
\ No newline at end of file
+see [[discussion]] for proposed operations and thoughts TODO
+remove this sentence
+
+
+# DRAFT atomic instructions
+
+These two instructions, `lat` and `stat`, are identical
+to `lwat/ldat` and `stwat/stdat` except add acquire and
+release guaranteed ordering semantics as well as 8 and
+16 bit memory widths.
+
+AT-Form (TODO)
+
+* lat. RT,RA,FC,aq,rl,ew
+* stat. RS,RA,FC,aq,rl,ew
+
+**DRAFT** EXT031 and XO, these are near to the existing
+atomic memory operations
+
+|0.5|6.10|11.15|16.20|21|22|23.24|25.30 |31|name| Form |
+|-- | -- | --- | --- |--|--|---- |------|--|----|------------|
+|31 | RT | RA | FC |lr|sc|ew |000101|Rc|lat | TODO-Form |
+|31 | RS | RA | FC |lr|sc|ew |100101|/ |stat| TODO-Form |
+
+* `ew` specifies the memory operation width: 0/1/2/3 8/16/32/64
+* If the `aq` bit is set,
+ then no later atomic memory operations can be observed
+ to take place before the AMO in this or other cores.
+ (A global Write-after-Read Memory Hazard is created)
+* If the `rl` bit is set, then other cores will not observe the AMO before
+ memory accesses preceding the AMO.
+ (A global Read-after-Write Memory Hazard is created)
+* Setting both the `aq` and the `rl` bit makes the sequence
+ sequentially consistent, meaning that
+ it cannot be reordered with respect to earlier or later atomic
+ memory operations. (Both a RaW and WaR are simultaneously created)
+* `FC` is identical to the Function tables used in Power ISA v3 for `lwat`
+ and `stwat`
+
+read functions v3.1 book II section 4.5.1 p1071
+
+|opcode| regs | memory | description |
+|------|----------------|------------------------|-----------------------------|
+|00000 | RT, RT+1 | mem(EA,s) | Fetch and Add |
+|00001 | RT, RT+1 | mem(EA,s) | Fetch and XOR |
+|00010 | RT, RT+1 | mem(EA,s) | Fetch and OR |
+|00011 | RT, RT+1 | mem(EA,s) | Fetch and AND |
+|00100 | RT, RT+1 | mem(EA,s) | Fetch and Maximum Unsigned |
+|00101 | RT, RT+1 | mem(EA,s) | Fetch and Maximum Signed |
+|00110 | RT, RT+1 | mem(EA,s) | Fetch and Minimum Unsigned |
+|00111 | RT, RT+1 | mem(EA,s) | Fetch and Minimum Signed |
+|01000 | RT, RT+1 | mem(EA,s) | Swap |
+|10000 | RT, RT+1, RT+2 | mem(EA,s) | Compare and Swap Not Equal |
+|11000 | RT | mem(EA,s) mem(EA+s, s) | Fetch and Increment Bounded |
+|11001 | RT | mem(EA,s) mem(EA+s, s) | Fetch and Increment Equal |
+|11100 | RT | mem(EA-s,s) mem(EA, s) | Fetch and Decrement Bounded |
+
+store functions
+
+|opcode| regs | memory | description |
+|------|------|-----------|-----------------------------|
+|00000 | RS | mem(EA,s) | Store Add |
+|00001 | RS | mem(EA,s) | Store XOR |
+|00010 | RS | mem(EA,s) | Store OR |
+|00011 | RS | mem(EA,s) | Store AND |
+|00100 | RS | mem(EA,s) | Store Maximum Unsigned |
+|00101 | RS | mem(EA,s) | Store Maximum Signed |
+|00110 | RS | mem(EA,s) | Store Minimum Unsigned |
+|00111 | RS | mem(EA,s) | Store Minimum Signed |
+|11000 | RS | mem(EA,s) | Store Twin |
+
+These functions are also recognised as being part of the
+OpenCAPI Specification.