Yeah, I should have said "because then you don't have to have a
branch for the case where the platform always or *never* returns
consistent memory on a give machine."
>> >What performance advantages of consistent memory?
>> [...] For
>> example, pci_sync_single is 55 lines of C code in
>> linux-2.5.50/arch/sparc64/kernel/pci_iommu.c.
>
>Hmm... fair enough. Ok, I can see the point of a fall back to
>non-consistent approach given that. So I guess the idea makes sense,
>so long as dma_malloc() (without the consistent flag) is taken to be
>"give me DMAable memory, consistent or not, whichever is cheaper for
>this platform" rather than "give me DMAable memory, consistent if
>possible". It was originally presented as the latter which misled me.
As long as dma_sync_maybe works with the addresses returned by
dma_malloc and dma_malloc only returns the types of memory that the
callers claims to be prepared to deal with, the decision about what
kind of memory dma_malloc should return when it has a choice is up to
the platform implementation.
>I think the change to the parameters which I suggested in a reply to
>James makes this a bit clearer.
I previously suggested some of the changes in your description:
name them dma_{malloc,free} (which James basically agrees with), have
a flags field. However, given that it's a parameter and you're going
to pass a constant symbol like DMA_CONSISTENT or DMA_INCONSISTENT to it,
it doesn't really matter if its an enum or an int to start with, as it
could be changed later with minimal or zero driver changes.
I like your term DMA_CONSISTENT better than
DMA_CONFORMANCE_CONSISTANT. I think the word "conformance" in there
does not reduce the time that it takes to figure out what the symbol
means. I don't think any other facility will want to use the terms
DMA_{,IN}CONSISTENT, so I prefer that we go with the more medium sized
symbol.
Naming the parameter to dma_malloc "bus" would imply that it
will not look at individual device information like dma_mask, which is
wrong. Putting the flags field in the middle of the parameter list
will make the dma_malloc and dma_free lists unnnecessarily different.
I think these two were just oversights in your posting.
Anyhow, I think we're in full agreement at this point on the
substantive stuff at this point.
Adam J. Richter __ ______________ 575 Oroville Road
adam@yggdrasil.com \ / Milpitas, California 95035
+1 408 309-6081 | g g d r a s i l United States of America
"Free Software For The Rest Of Us."
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