ARM caches variants.

[jamie@shareable.org (Jamie Lokier)]

Catalin Marinas wrote:
> > > Even if you have a 1-way associative cache (some processors allow the
> > > disabling of the other 3 ways if you want to try), the tag stored with
> > > the cache line is different between different VAs on a VIVT cache.
> > >
> > > So with two different VAs mapping the same PA, if a VA0 access allocates
> > > the cache line and VA1 would find the same cache line via the index
> > > calculation, it would get a cache miss because the tags for VA0 and VA1
> > > do not match.
> > 
> > But if we assume that it evicts the contents of VA0 and allocates the
> > cache for VA1 when VA1 is accessed, the system would just work. 
> 
> That's correct, for this particular case it should work (though I think
> fully associative caches are not that common).

I think you might have meant 1-way caches, or running then with 1-way,
is never done.  But if you did have 1-way, then it might work. :-)

With 2-way or more, all bets are off because you don't know which way
will be evicted.

-- Jamie