From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Vipin Kumar Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:46:31 +0530 Subject: [U-Boot] [PATCH 1/2] drivers/net/designware, do an explicit memory access instead of implicit, re-written assignments to use readl() and writel(), all of this as preperation for making the driver able to work in a cached environment (I$D$ support). In-Reply-To: <20130123075559.49f94e5f@lilith> References: <1358863821-31956-1-git-send-email-frank.dols@synopsys.com> <1358863821-31956-2-git-send-email-frank.dols@synopsys.com> <50FF7531.7030609@st.com> <20130123075559.49f94e5f@lilith> Message-ID: <50FFB87F.3060609@st.com> List-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: u-boot@lists.denx.de On 1/23/2013 12:25 PM, Albert ARIBAUD wrote: > Hi Vipin, > >> My first feeling is that the descriptors are allocated as Normal >> Cachabale memory and it would not help to access them using readl/writel >> >> Should the desciptors be allocated as non-cachable memory. If yes then >> how to do that in u-boot >> >> I suppose the rest of the code would be better reviewed if we know about >> this >> >> Vipin > > I would say that yes, descriptors are allocated in DRAM, so they are > cacheable. > > And no, we don't need to allocate them non-cacheable, although in this > case we need to use cache flush and invalidate calls. I would suggest > doing so rather than allocating the descriptors non cacheable, because > using non-cacheable memory makes the dependency between the driver and > cache codes implicit (and thus more prone to improperly thought out > changes in either code) and the memory usage more complex, while > explicit cache operations make the relationship explicit. > Yes, got it. Thanks Albert Frank, so in that case rather changing the code to use readl/writel, cache flush and invalidate operations need to be performed at appropriate places Regards Vipin > One can always not cache descriptors if you one wants to, without this > decision breaking driver functionality. > > Amicalement,