Re: ioremap_nocache problem?

David Wragg (dpw@doc.ic.ac.uk)
24 Jan 2001 00:50:20 +0000


From: David Wragg <dpw@doc.ic.ac.uk>
Gcc: nnfolder:mail.sent
--text follows this line--
Roman Zippel <zippel@fh-brandenburg.de> writes:
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Mark Mokryn wrote:
> > ioremap_nocache does the following:
> > return __ioremap(offset, size, _PAGE_PCD);

You have a point.

It would be nice if ioremap took a argument indicating the desired
memory type -- normal, nocache, write-through, write-combining, etc.
Then it could look in an architecture-specific table to get the
appropriate page flags for that type.

(x86 processors with PAT and IA64 can set write-combining through page
flags. x86 processors with MTRRs but not PAT would need a more
elaborate implementation for write-combining.)

> >
> > However, in drivers/char/mem.c (2.4.0), we see the following:
> >
> > /* On PPro and successors, PCD alone doesn't always mean
> > uncached because of interactions with the MTRRs. PCD | PWT
> > means definitely uncached. */
> > if (boot_cpu_data.x86 > 3)
> > prot |= _PAGE_PCD | _PAGE_PWT;
> >
> > Does this mean ioremap_nocache() may not do the job?
>
> ioremap creates a new mapping that shouldn't interfere with MTRR, whereas
> you can map a MTRR mapped area into userspace. But I'm not sure if it's
> correct that no flag is set for boot_cpu_data.x86 <= 3...

The boot_cpu_data.x86 > 3 test is there because the 386 doesn't have
PWT.

David Wragg
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