Re: [RFC][PATCH] add dma_reserve_coherent_memory()/dma_free_reserved_memory() API

FUJITA Tomonori
2010-08-26T05:41:12Z

On Fri, 20 Aug 2010 14:50:12 +0300
Marin Mitov <mitov@issp.bas.bg> wrote:

> On Friday, August 20, 2010 11:35:06 am FUJITA Tomonori wrote:
> > On Fri, 20 Aug 2010 11:13:45 +0300
> > Marin Mitov <mitov@issp.bas.bg> wrote:
> >
> > > > > This tric is already used in drivers/staging/dt3155v4l.c
> > > > > dt3155_alloc_coherent()/dt3155_free_coherent()
> > > > >
> > > > > Here proposed for general use by popular demand from video4linux folks.
> > > > > Helps for videobuf-dma-contig framework.
> > > >
> > > > What you guys exactly want to do? If you just want to pre-allocate
> > > > coherent memory for latter usage,
> > >
> > > Yes, just to preallocate not coherent, but rather contiguous memory for latter usage.
> > > We use coherent memory because it turns out to be contiguous.
> >
> > Hmm, you don't care about coherency? You just need contiguous memory?
>
> Yes. We just need contiguous memory. Coherency is important as far as when dma
> transfer finishes user land is able to see the new data. Could be done by something like
> dma_{,un}map_single()

Then, we should avoid using coherent memory as I exaplained before. In
addition, dma_alloc_coherent can't provide large enough contigous
memory for some drivers so this patch doesn't help much.

We need the proper API for contiguous memory. Seem that we could have