Re: [LKML] Re: [PATCH v3] ad7877: keep dma rx buffers in seperatecache lines

[FUJITA Tomonori]

On Wed, 19 May 2010 23:52:26 +1000
Nick Piggin <npiggin@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 03:44:30PM +0200, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> > On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 11:36:56PM +1000, Nick Piggin wrote:
> > > On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 02:17:47PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > > >
> > > > The 'cacheline aligned' misconception did manage to get into the ad7877
> > > > driver in commit 3843384a though -- it now uses ____cacheline_aligned
> > > > instead of __attribute__((__aligned__(ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN))) as it
> > > > should.
> > > 
> > > OK so long as there is not a "must be cacheline aligned" requirement.
> > > Your proposal for a __dma_aligned attribute in an arch header looks
> > > like a good idea there.
> > 
> > Would you happen to know of other potential users?  At this point I'd
> > much rather just allocate the buffers dynamically and hide the issue
> > nicely behind kmalloc().
> 
> I don't think we need to hide the fact that some platforms have
> specific alignment restrictions for DMA. So if any drivers make use
> of the alignment, I see no problem with __dma_aligned.

IIRC, such was proposed several times:

http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-scsi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg12633.html

I guess that we agreed that it's better to tell driver writers to just
use kmalloc.
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