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From: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
To: linux-mips@linux-mips.org
Subject: Warning about add_wired_entry
Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 15:02:36 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20091207150236.GD19269@linux-mips.org> (raw)

The earlier posting wrt. add_wired_entry reminded my of this long standing
issue.

The kernel does not reserve any address space for use by add_wired_entry().
In other words there is the possibility that vmalloc, ioremap or other
kernel APIs will use the same address space resulting in a crash or worse.

Currently there are three users of add_wired_entry:

 - Alchemy
 - Cavium
 - Jazz

The interface itself also is hostile as it directly exposes the MIPS TLB
registers to the C programmer so should die.  And often wiring a TLB entry
is a bad idea.  TLB entries are a scarce resource and wasting them unwisely
may impact performance.  Especially on the lowest-end CPUs with just
16 TLB entries this can be significant but even on the high-end TLBs with
64 entries it's not always clear if wiring entries is a good idea.  And
there are a few core types that don't even have the capability of wiring
entries.

  Ralf

             reply	other threads:[~2009-12-07 15:02 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2009-12-07 15:02 Ralf Baechle [this message]
2009-12-07 15:41 ` Warning about add_wired_entry pascal

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