Re: [PATCH 1/2] add phys_addr_t for holding physical addresses

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>]

On Mon, 2008-08-11 at 15:15 -0700, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
> Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> > On Mon, 2008-08-11 at 12:38 -0700, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
> >   
> >> Add a kernel-wide "phys_addr_t" which is guaranteed to be able to hold
> >> any physical address.  By default it equals the word size of the
> >> architecture, but a 32-bit architecture can set ARCH_PHYS_ADDR_T_64BIT
> >> if it needs a 64-bit phys_addr_t.
> >>     
> >
> > I've been wondering for some time why can't we make phys_addr_t and
> > resource_size_t the same thing... I don't like having two ARCH_* thing
> > especially since I believe the one for resources is already what we
> > want.
> >   
> 
> I made the same argument, but Andrew thinks they're conceptually 
> distinct.  It is theoretically possible you might have a system with >4G 
> memory, but all io resources < 4G, so you'd have resource_size_t 
> 32-bits, while having 64-bit physical addresses.  You can configure such 
> a thing, but I don't know if it's 1) useful or 2) used.

Are we sure resource_size_t is -never- used to represent memory ? I
though it was on some platforms....

Ben.