Re: bigphysarea in 2.2

Stephen Williams (steve@icarus.icarus.com)
Sun, 26 Apr 1998 10:20:30 -0600


rubini@pop.systemy.it said:
> In my own drivers (GPL'd modules, not in the kernel tarball) I ask the
> user to specify "mem=31M" to reserve the top 1M of RAM for DMA. This
> way I can have a 100MB buffer on a 128MB box without any trouble nor
> kernel patching. I think this is the best solution to the problem.
> Sure I can be wrong

Two such drivers and you are hosed. The bigphysarea does essentially what
you suggest, but provides a simple allocator on top of it.

Also, the bigphysarea interface would continue to work for different
architectures where memory is arranged differently, whatever.

-- 
Steve Williams                "The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
steve@icarus.com              But I have promises to keep,
steve@picturel.com            and lines to code before I sleep,
http://www.picturel.com       And lines to code before I sleep."

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