Re: [PATCH] Re: news about IDE PIO HIGHMEM bug (was: Re: 2.6.9-mm1)

[William Lee Irwin III]

Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> However, pfn_to_page(page_to_pfn(page) + 1) might be safer. If
>> rather slower. Is this patch acceptable to everyone?  Andrew?

On Wed, Oct 27, 2004 at 02:29:14PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> spose so.  The scatterlist API is being a bit silly there.
> It might be worthwhile doing:
> #ifdef CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM
> #define nth_page(page,n) pfn_to_page(page_to_pfn((page)) + n)
> #else
> #define nth_page(page,n) ((page)+(n))
> #endif

This is actually not quite good enough. Zones are not guaranteed
to have adjacent mem_map[]'s even with CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM=n. It may
make sense to prevent merging from spanning zones, but frankly the
overhead of the pfn_to_page()/page_to_pfn() is negligible in comparison
to the data movement and (when applicable) virtual windowing, where in
the merging code cpu overhead is a greater concern, particularly for
devices that don't require manual data movement.


-- wli
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