This document describes the cache/tlb flushing interfaces called
by the Linux VM subsystem. It enumerates over each interface,
-describes it's intended purpose, and what side effect is expected
+describes its intended purpose, and what side effect is expected
after the interface is invoked.
The side effects described below are stated for a uniprocessor
The biggest problem is that of virtual aliasing in the data cache
of a processor.
-Is your port susceptible to virtual aliasing in it's D-cache?
+Is your port susceptible to virtual aliasing in its D-cache?
Well, if your D-cache is virtually indexed, is larger in size than
PAGE_SIZE, and does not prevent multiple cache lines for the same
physical address from existing at once, you have this problem.
Next, you have to solve the D-cache aliasing issue for all
other cases. Please keep in mind that fact that, for a given page
mapped into some user address space, there is always at least one more
-mapping, that of the kernel in it's linear mapping starting at
+mapping, that of the kernel in its linear mapping starting at
PAGE_OFFSET. So immediately, once the first user maps a given
physical page into its address space, by implication the D-cache
aliasing problem has the potential to exist since the kernel already
All the functionality of flush_icache_page can be implemented in
flush_dcache_page and update_mmu_cache. In 2.7 the hope is to
remove this interface completely.
+
+The final category of APIs is for I/O to deliberately aliased address
+ranges inside the kernel. Such aliases are set up by use of the
+vmap/vmalloc API. Since kernel I/O goes via physical pages, the I/O
+subsystem assumes that the user mapping and kernel offset mapping are
+the only aliases. This isn't true for vmap aliases, so anything in
+the kernel trying to do I/O to vmap areas must manually manage
+coherency. It must do this by flushing the vmap range before doing
+I/O and invalidating it after the I/O returns.
+
+ void flush_kernel_vmap_range(void *vaddr, int size)
+ flushes the kernel cache for a given virtual address range in
+ the vmap area. This is to make sure that any data the kernel
+ modified in the vmap range is made visible to the physical
+ page. The design is to make this area safe to perform I/O on.
+ Note that this API does *not* also flush the offset map alias
+ of the area.
+
+ void invalidate_kernel_vmap_range(void *vaddr, int size) invalidates
+ the cache for a given virtual address range in the vmap area
+ which prevents the processor from making the cache stale by
+ speculatively reading data while the I/O was occurring to the
+ physical pages. This is only necessary for data reads into the
+ vmap area.
git://ftp.safe.ca / safe / jmp / linux-2.6 / blobdiff