Re: [PATCH resend 5/9] MIPS: sync after cacheflush

Ralf Baechle
2010-10-18T22:51:17Z

On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 12:41:20PM -0700, Kevin Cernekee wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 12:19 PM, Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org> wrote:
> > I'm trying to get a statement from the MIPS architecture guys if the
> > necessity to do anything beyond a cache flush is an architecture violation.
>
> IMO such a requirement would be unnecessarily strict. Larger flushes
> (e.g. page at a time) tend to benefit from some form of pipelining or
> write gathering. Forcing the processor to flush exactly 32 bytes at a
> time, synchronously, could really slow things down and thrash the
> memory controller.
>
> I have not been able to find any official statement from MIPS that
> says that CACHE + SYNC should be used, but that seems like the most
> intuitive way to implement things on the hardware side.

I agree with you but I seem to remember having read something that suggests
otherwise. Oh well, maybe it's just something in the Cambridge water
that makes my halocinate ;)

Ralf