Re: [RFC PATCH] drm: disable WC optimization for cache coherent devices on non-x86

Christoph Hellwig
2019-01-23T07:15:40Z

On Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 10:07:07PM +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> Yes, so much was clear. And the reason this breaks on some arm64
> systems is because
> a) non-snooped PCIe TLP attributes may be ignored, and
> b) non-x86 CPUs do not snoop the caches when accessing uncached mappings.
>
> I don't think there is actually any disagreement on this part. And I
> think my patch is reasonable, only Christoph is objecting to it on the
> grounds that drivers should not go around the DMA API and create
> vmap()s of DMA pages with self chosen attributes.

I object to it on various grounds. While the above is correct it really
is a mid to long-term fix.

But even in the short term your patch just maintains a random list of
idefs in a random driver, pokes into the dma-mapping internals and lacks
any comments in the code explaining on what is going on, leading to
futher cargo culting. So it very clearly is not acceptable.