From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 20:57:13 +0000
Subject: Re: Prezeroing V2 [0/3]: Why and When it works
Message-Id: <20041223205713.GE28322@waste.org>
List-Id: <linux-ia64.vger.kernel.org>
References: <B8E391BBE9FE384DAA4C5C003888BE6F02900FBD@scsmsx401.amr.corp.intel.com> <41C20E3E.3070209@yahoo.com.au> <Pine.LNX.4.58.0412211154100.1313@schroedinger.engr.sgi.com> <Pine.LNX.4.58.0412231119540.31791@schroedinger.engr.sgi.com>
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To: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: akpm@osdl.org, linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@osdl.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org

On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 11:29:10AM -0800, Christoph Lameter wrote:
> 2. Hardware support for offloading zeroing from the cpu. This avoids
> the invalidation of the cpu caches by extensive zeroing operations.

I'm wondering if it would be possible to use typical video cards for
hardware zeroing. We could set aside a page's worth of zeros in video
memory and then use the card's DMA engines to clear pages on the host.

This could be done in fbdev drivers, which would register a zeroer
with the core.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.