Re: [Qemu-devel] Qemu memory management

[Stuart Brady <sdbrady@ntlworld.com>]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 11:58:33AM +0200, Michael Neubauer wrote:

> "To avoid flushing the translated code each time the MMU mappings change,
> QEMU uses a physically indexed translation cache. It means that each TB is
> indexed with its physical address."
> 
> Why does a cache like that prevent the translated code from being flushed?
> If a translated code is relocated in physical memory (e. g. after a paging
> swap operation) that would render the cache useless in my opinion.

My impression is that "each time the MMU mappings change" basically
means "when there's a context switch" and not "when swapping occurs".

If code is swapped out, then yes, it would have to be translated again.
If you wanted to avoid that, you'd need a virtually indexed cache, and I
believe that would require co-operation from the OS, as it would be very
difficult for QEMU to keep track of processes/threads and paging itself.
You'd also have to deal with cache aliases to avoid translating code
for each process or thread that uses it.
-- 
Stuart Brady