it as a fallback for cmpxchg64 and cmpxchg64_local on 80386 and 80486. Q: but why is it called cmpxchg_486 when the other functions are called A: Because the standard cmpxchg is missing only on 386, but cmpxchg8b is missing both on 386 and 486. Citing Intel's Instruction set reference: cmpxchg: This instruction is not supported on Intel processors earlier than the Intel486 processors. cmpxchg8b: This instruction encoding is not supported on Intel processors earlier than the Pentium processors. Q: What's the reason to have cmpxchg64_local on 32 bit architectures? Without that need all this would just be a few simple defines. A: cmpxchg64_local on 32 bits architectures takes unsigned long long parameters, but cmpxchg_local only takes longs. Since we have cmpxchg8b to execute a 8 byte cmpxchg atomically on pentium and +, it makes sense to provide a flavor of cmpxchg and cmpxchg_local using this instruction. Also, for 32 bits architectures lacking the 64 bits atomic cmpxchg, it makes sense _not_ to define cmpxchg64 while cmpxchg could still be available. Moreover, the fallback for cmpxchg8b on i386 for 386 and 486 is a However, cmpxchg64_local will be emulated by disabling interrupts on all architectures where it is not supported atomically. Therefore, we *could* turn cmpxchg64_local into a cmpxchg_local, but it would make the 386/486 fallbacks ugly, make its design different from cmpxchg/cmpxchg64 (which really depends on atomic operations and cannot be emulated) and require the __cmpxchg_local to be expressed as a macro rather than an inline function so the parameters would not be fixed to unsigned long long in every case. So I think cmpxchg64_local makes sense there, but I am open to suggestions. Q: Are there any callers? A: I am actually using it in LTTng in my timestamping code. I use it to work around CPUs with asynchronous TSCs. I need to update 64 bits values atomically on this 32 bits architecture. Changelog: - Ran though checkpatch. Signed-off-by: Mathieu Desnoyers Cc: Andi Kleen Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner