as well. If the dec_and_test brings the state to NOT_RUNNING, that is the same as a cmpxchg succeeding to change EXECUTING to NOT_RUNNING. If a nested NMI were to come in and change it to LATCHED, the dec_and_test() would convert the state to EXECUTING (what we want it to be in such a case anyway). I asked 'slashdot' to post this as a patch, but it never came to be. I decided to do the work instead. Thanks to H. Peter Anvin for suggesting to use this_cpu_dec_and_return() instead of local_dec_and_test(&__get_cpu_var()). Link: http://lwn.net/Articles/484932/ Cc: H. Peter Anvin Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt Œ0 ½—5x