Question about Atomic operations

["Devesh Sharma" <devesh28@gmail.com>]

Hello Arjan and list,

The documentation related to atomic operations says that the following
functions should be called in SMP safe maner

void atomic_add(int i, atomic_t *v);
void atomic_sub(int i, atomic_t *v);
void atomic_inc(atomic_t *v);
void atomic_dec(atomic_t *v);

since the implementation of these functions are prefixed with LOCK
prefix (On i386 arch.) which either asserts LOCK# signal or performs
cache locking which gauarentees coherency.

Then why these functions should be called in SMP safe manner?
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/