Re: Linux-2.5.17

[Linus Torvalds]

On Wed, 22 May 2002, Russell King wrote:
>
> We seem to have inconsistent cache handling in the new TLB shootdown stuff.

Not surprising - I've worried only about changing the TLB architecture on
x86, where the caches do not matter.

> I think we have two options - either leave the cache handling up to
> tlb_start_vma() (in which case, flush_cache_range and flush_cache_mm
> are redundant and should be removed) or let it be up to the caller
> of tlb_gather_mmu to call the right cache handling function.

I think I'd prefer the "let the tlb functions handle caches too" approach.

For many architectures, that means "tlb_start/end_vma()". Others can do it
in "tlb_remove_tlb_entry()".

There's another issue: I think we should aim to get rid of the old
"flush_tlb_xxxx()" functions, and aim to rely entirely on the TLB
gathering. vmalloc/vfree might be the one special case (and I suspect
vfree() is going to get a lot slower to make sure it does the right thing
wrt TLB's).

		Linus