Re: [PATCH v2 00/20] libnd: non-volatile memory device support

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 1:52 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 11:24 AM, Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Changes since v1 [1]: Incorporates feedback received prior to April 24.
>>
>> 1/ Ingo said [2]:
>>
>>        "So why on earth is this whole concept and the naming itself
>>        ('drivers/block/nd/' stands for 'NFIT Defined', apparently)
>>        revolving around a specific 'firmware' mindset and revolving
>>        around specific, weirdly named, overly complicated looking
>>        firmware interfaces that come with their own new weird
>>        glossary??"
>>
>>    Indeed, we of course consulted the NFIT specification to determine
>>    the shape of the sub-system, but then let its terms and data
>>    structures permeate too deep into the implementation.  That is fixed
>>    now with all NFIT specifics factored out into acpi.c.  The NFIT is no
>>    longer required reading to review libnd.  Only three concepts are
>>    needed:
>>
>>       i/ PMEM - contiguous memory range where cpu stores are
>>          persistent once they are flushed through the memory
>>          controller.
>>
>>      ii/ BLK - mmio apertures (sliding windows) that can be
>>          programmed to access an aperture's-worth of persistent
>>          media at a time.
>>
>>     iii/ DPA - "dimm-physical-address", address space local to a
>>          dimm.  A dimm may provide both PMEM-mode and BLK-mode
>>          access to a range of DPA.  libnd manages allocation of DPA
>>          to either PMEM or BLK-namespaces to resolve this aliasing.
>
> Mostly for my understanding: is there a name for "address relative to
> the address lines on the DIMM"?  That is, a DIMM that exposes 8 GB of
> apparent physical memory, possibly interleaved, broken up, or weirdly
> remapped by the memory controller, would still have addresses between
> 0 and 8 GB.  Some of those might be PMEM windows, some might be MMIO,
> some might be BLK apertures, etc.
>
> IIUC "DPA" refers to actual addressable storage, not this type of address?

No, DPA is exactly as you describe above.  You can't directly access
it except through a PMEM mapping (possibly interleaved with DPA from
other DIMMs) or a BLK aperture (mmio window into DPA).
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