Re: [PATCH 6/6] arm64: document the choice of page attributes for pgprot_dmacoherent

[Will Deacon]

Hi Christoph,

Thanks for spinning this into a patch.

On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 09:07:54AM +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> Based on an email from Will Deacon.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxx>
> ---
>  arch/arm64/include/asm/pgtable.h | 8 ++++++++
>  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/arch/arm64/include/asm/pgtable.h b/arch/arm64/include/asm/pgtable.h
> index 6700371227d1..6ff221d9a631 100644
> --- a/arch/arm64/include/asm/pgtable.h
> +++ b/arch/arm64/include/asm/pgtable.h
> @@ -435,6 +435,14 @@ static inline pmd_t pmd_mkdevmap(pmd_t pmd)
>  	__pgprot_modify(prot, PTE_ATTRINDX_MASK, PTE_ATTRINDX(MT_NORMAL_NC) | PTE_PXN | PTE_UXN)
>  #define pgprot_device(prot) \
>  	__pgprot_modify(prot, PTE_ATTRINDX_MASK, PTE_ATTRINDX(MT_DEVICE_nGnRE) | PTE_PXN | PTE_UXN)
> +/*
> + * DMA allocations for non-coherent devices use what the Arm architecture calls
> + * "Normal non-cacheable" memory, which permits speculation, unaligned accesses
> + * and merging of writes.  This is different from "Strongly Ordered" memory
> + * which is intended for MMIO and thus forbids speculation, preserves access
> + * size, requires strict alignment and also forces write responses to come from
> + * the endpoint.
> + */

Mind if I tweak the second sentence to be:

  This is different from "Device-nGnR[nE]" memory which is intended for MMIO
  and thus forbids speculation, preserves access size, requires strict
  alignment and can also force write responses to come from the endpoint.

? It's a small change, but it better fits with the arm64 terminology
("strongly ordered" is no longer used in the architecture).

If you're happy with that, I can make the change and queue this patch
for 5.4.

Thanks,

Will