Re: xchg & lock question


Eman wrote:
For those, who may also being interesting in this topic,
the answer is as follows.

These are e.g. Pentium 4, Intel Xeon, and P6 family processors.
For them, if the memory area being accessed is cached internally
in the processor, the LOCK# signal is generally not asserted;
instead, locking is only applied to the processor's caches.
("IA-32 IntelR Architecture Software Developer's Manual,
Volume 3: System Programming Guide").

--

"Eman" <spamtrap@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e06vfn$2dlm$2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
According to Intel' manual "when a memory operand is used with the XCHG
instruction, the processor's LOCK signal is automatically
asserted". AMD documentation also states that.

Can someone tell me, which of IA32 compatible processors do not
assert LOCK automatically in the case of XCHG reg,[mem] ?


All IA32 processors automatically lock memory referencing XCHG
instructions, as do 286s. 8086/8 and 8018Xs did not.

You comment about the lock signal not being asserted outside of a
particular CPU when that CPU has the data item cached (specifically if
the processor has the cache line cached in an *exclusive* state), is
correct, but somewhat irrelevant. From a software perspective the
locked region does not have to exceed the actual memory operand
(although it often does), so "locked" access to an exclusive cache line
without asserting the actual inter-processor lock signal does not cause
a software visible change, except for being much, much, faster.

.

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