Re: [Intel IOMMU][patch 4/8] Supporting Zero Length Reads in Intel IOMMU.

Ashok Raj
2007-04-24T20:44:08Z

On Tue, Apr 24, 2007 at 09:28:11PM +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> On Tuesday 24 April 2007 08:03:03 Ashok Raj wrote:
> > PCI specs permit zero length reads (ZLR) even if the mapping for that region
> > is write only. Support for this feature is indicated by the presence of a bit
> > in the DMAR capability. If a particular DMAR does not support this capability
> > we map write-only regions as read-write.
> >
> > This option can also provides a workaround for some drivers that request
> > a write-only mapping when they really should request a read-write.
> > (We ran into one such case in eepro100.c in handling rx_ring_dma)
>
> Better just fix the drivers instead of adding such hacks

Some of the early DMAR's dont handle zero-length-reads as required. hardware
that supports it correctly will advertise via its capabilities.

We could remove the cmdline option since it should not be really required.