Re: CPA patchset

Andi Kleen
2008-01-10T09:55:31Z

On Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 07:44:03PM +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:
> >
> > finally managed to get the time to review your CPA patchset, and i
> > fundamentally agree with most of the detail changes done in it. But here
> > are a few structural high-level observations:
> >
> > - firstly, there's no rationale given. So we'll change ioremap()/etc.
> > from doing a cflush-range instruction instead of a WBINVD. But why?
> > WBINVD isnt particular fast (takes a few msecs), but why is that a
> > problem? Drivers dont do high-frequency ioremap-ing. It's typically
> > only done at driver/device startup and that's it. Whether module load
> > time takes 1254 msecs instead of 1250 msecs is no big deal.
>
> read graphics drivers, even though I think we may avoid the whole path

You mean avoid change_page_attr() ?

> if we can and end up doing some of this in the drivers
> when they know more about the situation so can avoid safeties..

Please explain, but it sounds very dubious.

> but I still see this being used in AGP a fair bit at some point on
> some drivers..

Well GARTs and those are widely used even without AGP busses.

-Andi