Re: ioremap_uc() followed by set_memory_wc() - burrying MTRR

Luis R. Rodriguez
2015-04-22T15:23:28Z

On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 11:39:39PM -0600, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 01:39:07AM +0200, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> > > Mike, do you think the time is right to just remove the iPath driver?
> >
> > With PAT now being default the driver effectively won't work
> > with write-combining on modern kernels. Even if systems are old
> > they likely had PAT support, when upgrading kernels PAT will work
> > but write-combing won't on ipath.
>
> Sorry, do you mean the driver already doesn't get WC? Or do you mean
> after some more pending patches are applied?

No, you have to consider the system used and the effects of calls used
on the driver in light of this table:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
MTRR Non-PAT PAT Linux ioremap value Effective memory type
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Non-PAT | PAT
PAT
|PCD
||PWT
|||
WC 000 WB _PAGE_CACHE_MODE_WB WC | WC
WC 001 WC _PAGE_CACHE_MODE_WC WC* | WC
WC 010 UC- _PAGE_CACHE_MODE_UC_MINUS WC* | UC
WC 011 UC _PAGE_CACHE_MODE_UC UC | UC
----------------------------------------------------------------------

(*) denotes implementation defined and is discouraged

ioremap_nocache() will use _PAGE_CACHE_MODE_UC_MINUS by default today,
in the future we want to flip the switch and make _PAGE_CACHE_MODE_UC
the default. When that flip occurs it will mean ipath cannot get
write-combining on both non-PAT and PAT systems. Now that is for
the future, lets review the current situation for ipath.

For PAT capable systems if mtrr_add() is used today on a Linux system on a
region mapped with ioremap_nocache() that will mean you effectively nullify the
mtrr_add() effect as the combinatorial effect above yields an effective memory
type of UC. For PAT systems you want to use ioremap_wc() on the region in
which you need write-combining followed by arch_phys_wc_add() which will *only*
call mtrr_add() *iff* PAT was not enabled. This also means we need to split
the ioremap'd areas so that the area that is using ioremap_nocache() can never
get write-combining (_PAGE_CACHE_MODE_UC). The ipath driver needs the regions
split just as was done for the qib driver.

Now we could just say that leaving things as-is is a non-issue if you are OK
with non-write-combining effects being the default behaviour left on the ipath
driver for PAT systems. In that case we can just use arch_phys_wc_add() on the
driver and while it won't trigger the mtrr_add() on PAT systems it sill won't
have any effect. We just typically don't want to see use of ioremap_nocache()
paired with arch_phys_wc_add(), grammatically the correct thing to do is pair
ioremap_wc() areas with a arch_phys_wc_add() to make the write-combining effects
on non-PAT systems. If the ipath driver is not going to get he work required
to split the regions though perhaps we can live with a corner case driver that
annotates PAT must be disabled on the systems that use it and convert it to
arch_phys_wc_add() to just help with phasing out of direct use of mtrr_add().
With this strategy if and when ipath driver gets a split done it would gain WC
on both PAT and non-PAT.

Luis