Re: CMA alignment question

From: Gregory Fong
Date: Tue Nov 04 2014 - 23:19:36 EST


On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 2:27 PM, Michal Nazarewicz <mina86@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 04 2014, Gregory Fong wrote:
>> The alignment in cma_alloc() is done w.r.t. the bitmap. This is a
>> problem when, for example:
>>
>> - a device requires 16M (order 12) alignment
>> - the CMA region is not 16 M aligned
>>
>> In such a case, can result with the CMA region starting at, say,
>> 0x2f800000 but any allocation you make from there will be aligned from
>> there. Requesting an allocation of 32 M with 16 M alignment, will
>> result in an allocation from 0x2f800000 to 0x31800000, which doesn't
>> work very well if your strange device requires 16M alignment.
>>
>> This doesn't have the behavior I would expect, which would be for the
>> allocation to be aligned w.r.t. the start of memory. I realize that
>> aligning the CMA region is an option, but don't see why cma_alloc()
>> aligns to the start of the CMA region. Is there a good reason for
>> having cma_alloc() alignment work this way?
>
> No, it's a bug. The alignment should indicate alignment of physical
> address not position in CMA region.
>

Ah, now I see that Marek submitted this patch from you back in 2011
that would have allowed the bitmap lib to support an alignment offset:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1121103/focus=1121100

Any idea why this didn't make it into the later changesets? If not,
I'll resubmit it and to use it to fix this bug.

Thanks,
Gregory
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