Subject: Re: How to map memory uncached on PPC.

From: "John W. Linville" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 14:08:28 -0400

On Sat, Aug 20, 2005 at 08:59:42AM -0700, Stephen Williams wrote:
> Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:

> >A simple experiment you can do is limit the memory used by the kernel
> >(booting with mem=xxxx) and then use mmap of /dev/mem to map the
> >remaining memory like if it was an IO device, uncached. With that, you
> >get a quick hack solution to validate the performance benefit at least.
> 
> I did an even simpler experiment: I commented out the pci_map_single,
> which on a PPC only has the effect of calling invalidate_dcache_range
> and returning the virt_to_bus of the address. Obviously, the cache
> is still enabled for the processor, and the image data may get
> corrupted, but this was a performance test, not a solution.

If your purpose is to evaluate performance, doesn't having the cache
enabled limit the usefulness of your test?  For example if your cache
uses a write-back policy then your test will probably outperform the
actual uncached accesses.  YMMV, I suppose...

John
-- 
John W. Linville
[email-masked]