Query about: ARM11 MPCore: preemption/task migration cache coherency

[catalin.marinas@arm.com (Catalin Marinas)]

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 04:11:46AM +0100, bill4carson wrote:
> On 2012?05?31? 11:00, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> > On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 11:01:59AM +0100, bill4carson wrote:
> >> On 2012?05?30? 14:38, Will Deacon wrote:
> >>> On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 06:28:11AM +0100, bill4carson wrote:
> >>>> --- a/arch/arm/mm/cache-v6.S
> >>>> +++ b/arch/arm/mm/cache-v6.S
> >>>> @@ -170,6 +170,10 @@ ENDPROC(v6_coherent_kern_range)
> >>>>     ENTRY(v6_flush_kern_dcache_area)
> >>>>            add     r1, r0, r1
> >>>>     1:
> >>>> +#ifdef CONFIG_SMP
> >>>> +       ldr     r2, [r0]                        @ read for ownership
> >>>> +       str     r2, [r0]                        @ write for ownership
> >>>> +#endif /* CONFIG_SMP */
> >>>>     #ifdef HARVARD_CACHE
> >>>>            mcr     p15, 0, r0, c7, c14, 1          @ clean&   invalidate D line
> >>>>     #else
> >>>
> >>> I don't think the invalidation is needed here, so you probably don't need to
> >>> hack this function at all.
> > ...
> >> 1. task t runs on CPU 0, it executes one program in nand flash,
> >>      so first task t read *part* of this program into its local Dcache,
> >>      let's call it part_a;
> >>
> >> 2. task t migrates from CPU0 onto CPU1, in there reads the rest of
> >>      program into its local Dcache, label it part_b;
> >>
> >> 3. on CPU1, task t flush the whole address range of this program,
> >>      As with ARM11 MPCore, this flush is locally effective, after flush
> >>      part_a still resides in CPU0 L1 Dcache.
> >>
> >> 4. When this program gets executed, CPU 1 fetch its instructions from
> >>      Icache, SCU will notice this action,
> >>
> >>      Question:
> >>      At this point, is stale part_a in main memory *or* L1 Dcache part_a
> >>      in CPU0 routed into CPU1 as instruction?
> >
> > This has been discussed in the past. The first thing is to disable
> > CONFIG_PREEMPT to make sure you are not preempted between page copying
> > and task execution. The code doing the page copy needs to call
> > flush_dcache_page() on the CPU where the copy occurred and Linux does a
> > non-lazy D-cache flush. But there are many situations where Linux
> > doesn't do this (you can google for flush_dcache_page and my name to
> > find a few places where I tried to fix this).
>
> Thanks:)

BTW, see this as a starting point (and a hack):

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ports.arm.kernel/51556

-- 
Catalin