Re: PAT status?
From: Dave Jones
Date: Fri Dec 09 2005 - 13:44:52 EST
On Thu, Dec 08, 2005 at 03:37:43PM +0000, Daniel J Blueman wrote:
> Terence Ripperda wrote:
> > Hi Jeff,
> >
> > I unfortunately haven't had much time to look at the status of the PAT
> > code I had been working on. there are really 2 steps to the code:
> >
> > the first is enabling and configuring the PAT registers. this then
> > allows a page table entry define that can be passed to traditional
> > interfaces, such as remap_page_range or change_page_attr. this is
> > pretty simple and we've been using a similar interface in our driver
> > for some time now.
>
> Presumably, the aliasing will only bite where eg the X server sets up
> MTRRs and PAT is used for the region also. For x86_64 and IA32, the
> Intel IA32 system guides tell us that strong store ordering (ie
> write-through) takes precendence over weaker store ordering (eg
> write-combining), so we should be safe. For processors with known
> errata with PAT etc, we can disable PAT support.
>
> Would it be useful to get a rough patch covering point #1 onto LKML
> for discussion?
http://lwn.net/Articles/135883/ is Terrence's last patch
rediffed against 2.6.12 patch.
Dave
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