Re: [PATCH] Fix ARM64/MSVC atomic memory ordering issues on Win11 by adding explicit DMB ?barriers

On Wed, Dec 17, 2025 at 10:40 AM Nathan Bossart
<nathandbossart(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Hm. I think the USE_LLVM_BACKPORT_SECTION_MEMORY_MANAGER thing might need
> work, too. We don't have any Windows buildfarm machines with LLVM enabled,
> but IIUC it should be possible. Perhaps we can add that to unicorn.

The LLVM code has never run on Windows and will likely need
patching... I know of at least one change required and will write
about that.

> > Also, while the patch
> > is targeting Windows 11 (IIUC), there are some notes in the docs that give
> > the impression Windows 10 is supported, too [0]. I could easily change it
> > to say that AArch64 requires Windows 11, but I don't know what to do with
> > the references to specific versions of Visual Studio and the Windows SDK.
>
> Actually, I'm not sure there's anything specific to Windows 11 in this
> patch, besides perhaps the choice to set USE_ARMV8_CRC32C unconditionally.
> I don't know how likely it is that someone will try to run Postgres on
> Windows on an AArch64 machine without CRC extension support, though.

Assuming you haven't blocked OS updates, Windows stopped booting on
pre-ARMv8.1 hardware a while back. RPi4's Broadcom chip and the
Snapdragon 835 (found in the oldest Windows laptops, according to a
quick Google search) are ARMv8-A only, but did actually have the CRC32
instructions, so it would actually work anyway. They also have the
optional NEON SIMD stuff, which we use unconditionally:

/*
* We use the Neon instructions if the compiler provides access to them (as
* indicated by __ARM_NEON) and we are on aarch64. While Neon support is
* technically optional for aarch64, it appears that all available 64-bit
* hardware does have it. Neon exists in some 32-bit hardware too, but we
* could not realistically use it there without a run-time check, which seems
* not worth the trouble for now.
*/

A single chip in this report lacked FEAT_CRC32, the X-Gene 1 from 2012:

https://gpages.juszkiewicz.com.pl/arm-socs-table/arm-socs.html

So I don't think it's worth worrying about, I was just mentioning the
"Windows 11 requires CRC32, Windows 10 is dead" thing to avoid Greg
being forced to waste time researching the missing feature test code
:-) The reason Windows can't boot on old ARM chips probably has more
to do with the modern atomics needed for decent lock performance,
which every kernel wants.