> The way I see it, the entire point here is to emulate the existing
> synchronization semantics of spl()s, __for drivers and subsystems
> which have not yet been modified to be SMP-safe.  For those drivers we
> *need* to preserve the existing semantics,.whereby raising spl to a
> given level guarantees synchronized, race-free access to
> data structures accessed at that SPL level.  The code fragment above,
> the one you ask us not to do, is very close to what I see as what we
> *have* to do --- but only as a stop-gap, for drivers and code which
> are not yet reworked to be SMP-safe.

we already have kernel_lock, which is exactly to emulate the existing
synchronization semantics.
why to bother to waste time to introduce and stabilize
another stop-gap hack rather than doing real smp work?

YAMAMOTO Takashi