Documentation: Kill all references to mmiowb()

The guarantees provided by mmiowb() are now provided implicitly by
spin_unlock(), so remove all references to this most confusing of
barriers from our Documentation.

Good riddance.

Acked-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 45 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/driver-api/device-io.rst b/Documentation/driver-api/device-io.rst
index b00b23903078..0e389378f71d 100644
--- a/Documentation/driver-api/device-io.rst
+++ b/Documentation/driver-api/device-io.rst
@@ -103,51 +103,6 @@ continuing execution::
         ha->flags.ints_enabled = 0;
     }
 
-In addition to write posting, on some large multiprocessing systems
-(e.g. SGI Challenge, Origin and Altix machines) posted writes won't be
-strongly ordered coming from different CPUs. Thus it's important to
-properly protect parts of your driver that do memory-mapped writes with
-locks and use the :c:func:`mmiowb()` to make sure they arrive in the
-order intended. Issuing a regular readX() will also ensure write ordering,
-but should only be used when the 
-driver has to be sure that the write has actually arrived at the device
-(not that it's simply ordered with respect to other writes), since a
-full readX() is a relatively expensive operation.
-
-Generally, one should use :c:func:`mmiowb()` prior to releasing a spinlock
-that protects regions using :c:func:`writeb()` or similar functions that
-aren't surrounded by readb() calls, which will ensure ordering
-and flushing. The following pseudocode illustrates what might occur if
-write ordering isn't guaranteed via :c:func:`mmiowb()` or one of the
-readX() functions::
-
-    CPU A:  spin_lock_irqsave(&dev_lock, flags)
-    CPU A:  ...
-    CPU A:  writel(newval, ring_ptr);
-    CPU A:  spin_unlock_irqrestore(&dev_lock, flags)
-            ...
-    CPU B:  spin_lock_irqsave(&dev_lock, flags)
-    CPU B:  writel(newval2, ring_ptr);
-    CPU B:  ...
-    CPU B:  spin_unlock_irqrestore(&dev_lock, flags)
-
-In the case above, newval2 could be written to ring_ptr before newval.
-Fixing it is easy though::
-
-    CPU A:  spin_lock_irqsave(&dev_lock, flags)
-    CPU A:  ...
-    CPU A:  writel(newval, ring_ptr);
-    CPU A:  mmiowb(); /* ensure no other writes beat us to the device */
-    CPU A:  spin_unlock_irqrestore(&dev_lock, flags)
-            ...
-    CPU B:  spin_lock_irqsave(&dev_lock, flags)
-    CPU B:  writel(newval2, ring_ptr);
-    CPU B:  ...
-    CPU B:  mmiowb();
-    CPU B:  spin_unlock_irqrestore(&dev_lock, flags)
-
-See tg3.c for a real world example of how to use :c:func:`mmiowb()`
-
 PCI ordering rules also guarantee that PIO read responses arrive after any
 outstanding DMA writes from that bus, since for some devices the result of
 a readb() call may signal to the driver that a DMA transaction is