Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751288Ab0B1XRU (ORCPT ); Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:17:20 -0500 Received: from cam-admin0.cambridge.arm.com ([217.140.96.50]:63337 "EHLO cam-admin0.cambridge.arm.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750802Ab0B1XRS (ORCPT ); Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:17:18 -0500 Subject: Re: USB mass storage and ARM cache coherency From: Catalin Marinas To: Benjamin Herrenschmidt Cc: Matthew Dharm , linux-usb@vger.kernel.org, Russell King - ARM Linux , "Mankad, Maulik Ojas" , Sergei Shtylyov , Ming Lei , Sebastian Siewior , Oliver Neukum , linux-kernel , "Shilimkar, Santosh" , Pavel Machek , Greg KH , linux-arm-kernel In-Reply-To: <1267220980.23523.1820.camel@pasglop> References: <1266445892.16346.306.camel@pasglop> <1266599755.32546.38.camel@e102109-lin.cambridge.arm.com> <1266979170.23523.1660.camel@pasglop> <1267202674.14703.70.camel@e102109-lin.cambridge.arm.com> <1267220980.23523.1820.camel@pasglop> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Organization: ARM Limited Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:17:14 +0000 Message-ID: <1267399034.4485.24.camel@e102109-lin.cambridge.arm.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.28.1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 28 Feb 2010 23:17:15.0993 (UTC) FILETIME=[2A88D490:01CAB8CC] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1664 Lines: 37 On Fri, 2010-02-26 at 21:49 +0000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote: > > > > On ARM11MPCore we flush the caches in flush_dcache_page() because the > > > > cache maintenance operations weren't visible to the other CPUs. > > > > > > I'm not even sure that's going to be 100% correct. Don't you also need > > > to flush the remote icaches when you are dealing with instructions (such > > > as swap) anyways ? > > > > I don't think we tried swap but for pages that have been mapped for the > > first time, the I-cache would be clean. > > > > At mm switching, if a thread > > migrates to a new CPU we invalidate the cache at that point. > > That sounds fragile. What about a multithread app with one thread on > each core hitting the pages at the same time ? Sounds racy to me... Interestingly, until commit 826cbdaff29 (< 2 years ago), we didn't have any I-cache flushing in update_mmu_cache() and it was working fine. I added it for correctness reasons rather than to fix something. My theory is that it was working because a page cache page tends to keep the same physical address, especially if we don't swap pages, and a 16KB PIPT cache cannot hold enough lines to show any issues (lines are replaced frequently). I suspect that's one of the reasons why only invalidating the whole I-cache when switching the mm to a new CPU seems to suffice. Once we enable some form of swapping, it may show the problem. -- Catalin -- 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/