Re: [PATCH] RISC-V: enable sparsemem by default for defconfig

From: Conor Dooley <conor@kernel.org>
To: Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@rivosinc.com>
Cc: Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@dabbelt.com>,
	linux-riscv@lists.infradead.org, daire.mcnamara@microchip.com,
	Conor Dooley <conor.dooley@microchip.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] RISC-V: enable sparsemem by default for defconfig
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2022 21:36:01 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <Y4Z7Qcfglxv6EuZz@spud> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <166975687110.10326.1643787645847753206.b4-ty@rivosinc.com>

On Tue, Nov 29, 2022 at 01:21:11PM -0800, Palmer Dabbelt wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Oct 2022 17:00:30 +0100, Conor Dooley wrote:
> > From: Conor Dooley <conor.dooley@microchip.com>
> > 
> > on an arch level, RISC-V defaults to FLATMEM. On PolarFire SoC, the
> > memory layout is almost always sparse, with a maximum of 1 GiB at
> > 0x8000_0000 & a possible 16 GiB range at 0x10_0000_0000. The Icicle kit,
> > for example, has 2 GiB of DDR - so there's a big hole in the memory map
> > between the two gigs. Prior to v6.1-rc1, boot times from defconfig
> > builds were pretty bad on Icicle but enabling sparsemem would fix those
> > issues. As of v6.1-rc1, the Icicle kit no longer boots from defconfig
> > builds with the in-kernel devicetree. A change to the memory map
> > resulted in a futher "sparse-ification", producing a splat on boot:
> > 
> > [...]
> 
> Applied, thanks!
> 
> [1/1] RISC-V: enable sparsemem by default for defconfig
>       https://git.kernel.org/palmer/c/41555cc9e2e9
> 
> I put this one on for-next under the argument it's not actually fixing a
> regression: if flatmem is now broken then that's a regression, but just turning
> it off isn't really the fix (even if it's still a reasonable thing to do).

flatmem is not broken, or at least - I haven't seen any evidence of it.
It's just that to support multiplatform stuff properly we should not be
assuming flatmem since systems may not fit the bill. The above oops is
because the memory map is too sparse for flatmem to keep papering over
the cracks any more after some DT changes I made for v6.1

> Maybe that's kind of pedantic, but it's late in the cycle.

No, that's perfectly reasonable to me. I'll just add an exception in our
CI for testing v6.1 when it becomes a stable kernel to not build
defconfig as-is ;)

Thanks,
Conor.

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