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To: Tom Rini <trini@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@redhat.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: PCI DMA to small buffers on cache-incoherent arch
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From: Roland Dreier <roland@topspin.com>
Date: 10 Jun 2002 10:28:55 -0700
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>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Rini <trini@kernel.crashing.org> writes:

    Roland> So is the consensus now that in general drivers should
    Roland> make sure any buffers passed to pci_map/unmap are aligned
    Roland> to SMP_CACHE_BYTES (and a multiple of SMP_CACHE_BYTES in
    Roland> size)?  In other words if a driver uses an unaligned
    Roland> buffer it should be fixed unless we can prove (and
    Roland> document in a comment :) that it won't cause problems on
    Roland> an arch without cache coherency and with a writeback
    Roland> cache.

    Tom> And how about we don't call it SMP_CACHE_BYTES too?  The
    Tom> processors where this matters certainly aren't doing SMP...

Fair enough... there is of course L1_CACHE_BYTES but I'm not positive
that's always the right thing.  If we want to introduce a new constant
then we will have to touch every arch (which is not necessarily a
killer but it means "fixed" drivers won't compile for everyone until
their arch is fixed).

What would you propose?  I don't have strong feelings about the exact
form of a solution but I would like to decide something so we can have
a standard way of fixing drivers that use unaligned DMA buffers (and
convincing maintainers to apply the patches).

Thanks,
  Roland



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