diff --git a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
index 8b11e54238bf..147ae8ec836f 100644
--- a/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
+++ b/Documentation/memory-barriers.txt
@@ -498,6 +498,11 @@ And a couple of implicit varieties:
      This means that ACQUIRE acts as a minimal "acquire" operation and
      RELEASE acts as a minimal "release" operation.
 
+A subset of the atomic operations described in atomic_ops.txt have ACQUIRE
+and RELEASE variants in addition to fully-ordered and relaxed (no barrier
+semantics) definitions.  For compound atomics performing both a load and a
+store, ACQUIRE semantics apply only to the load and RELEASE semantics apply
+only to the store portion of the operation.
 
 Memory barriers are only required where there's a possibility of interaction
 between two CPUs or between a CPU and a device.  If it can be guaranteed that