Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932600AbVKWXdJ (ORCPT ); Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:33:09 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751318AbVKWXdJ (ORCPT ); Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:33:09 -0500 Received: from clock-tower.bc.nu ([81.2.110.250]:44753 "EHLO lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751317AbVKWXdH (ORCPT ); Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:33:07 -0500 Subject: Re: [RFC] [PATCH 0/3] ioat: DMA engine support From: Alan Cox To: Andi Kleen Cc: Jeff Garzik , Andrew Grover , netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, john.ronciak@intel.com, christopher.leech@intel.com In-Reply-To: <20051123223007.GA5921@wotan.suse.de> References: <4384E7F2.2030508@pobox.com> <20051123223007.GA5921@wotan.suse.de> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 00:05:40 +0000 Message-Id: <1132790740.13095.53.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.2.3 (2.2.3-2.fc4) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1069 Lines: 27 On Mer, 2005-11-23 at 23:30 +0100, Andi Kleen wrote: > Another proposal was swiotlb. I was hoping Intel might have rediscovered the IOMMU by then and be back on feature parity with the VAX 11/750 > > But it's not clear it's a good idea: a lot of these applications prefer to > have the target in cache. And IOAT will force it out of cache. This is true for some cases but not all for iotlb CPU generated data going out that won't be rewritten immediately should be a cheap path not needing the cache. Incoming data would invalidate the cache anyway if it arrives by DMA so the ioat would move it asynchronously of the CPU without cache harm Might also be interesting to use one half of a hypedthread CPU as a copier using the streaming instructions, might be better than turning it off to improve performance ? Alan - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/