Re: [RFC] generic device DMA implementation

From: Matthew Wilcox (willy@debian.org)
Date: Fri Dec 06 2002 - 13:36:09 EST


On Fri, Dec 06, 2002 at 10:17:15AM -0800, David S. Miller wrote:
> Specifically, it took years to get most developers confortable with
> pci_alloc_consitent() and friends. I totally fear that asking them to
> now add cache flushing stuff to their drivers takes the complexity way
> over the edge.
>
> Willy, these PCXS/T processors sound like a newer cpu, do you mean to
> tell me the caches are totally not coherent with device bus space?
>
> Please elaborate, I want to learn more.

Nono, these are _old_ machines, probably stopped production round about
1995 or so. We mentioned these briefly back in the original days of
the pci_alloc_consistent interface discussions. These machines cannot
allocate uncached memory, nor can the peripherals snoop the CPU's cache
(or vice versa). As I indicated to Adam, there's a fairly limited range
of devices available for these systems and there shouldn't be a huge
problem converting the few drivers we need to these interfaces.

-- 
"It's not Hollywood.  War is real, war is primarily not about defeat or
victory, it is about death.  I've seen thousands and thousands of dead bodies.
Do you think I want to have an academic debate on this subject?" -- Robert Fisk
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