PowerPC PCI DMA issues (prefetch/coherency?)

[Leon Woestenberg]

Hello all,

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 2:37 AM, FUJITA
Tomonori<fujita.tomonori at lab.ntt.co.jp> wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:18:45 +1000
> Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh at kernel.crashing.org> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 2009-06-16 at 20:02 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>> > On Tuesday 16 June 2009, Scott Wood wrote:
>> > > > If the
>> > > > device is the only one, you can also use dma_alloc_noncoherent() and
>> > > > flush explicitly with dma_cache_sync().
>> > >
>> > > I don't see how that would help -- aren't those also controlled by
>> > > CONFIG_NOT_COHERENT_CACHE?
>> >
>> > Ah, yes you are right. PowerPC implements dma_alloc_noncoherent as
>> > dma_alloc_coherent, so dma_cache_sync() is actually a NOP (or should be).
>>
>> But we still need to sync the result of dma_map_* when used multiple
>> times for a single mapping.
>
> We have dma_sync_{single|sg}_for_{cpu|device} API for the above
> purpose.
>
> dma_cache_sync is supposed to be used only with the buffers that
> dma_alloc_noncoherent() returns. On architecutures that maps
> dma_alloc_noncoherent to dma_alloc_coherent, dma_cache_sync() is
> supposed to be NOP.

This discussion raised some doubt with me about my use case:

I my case (note I am not the poster) I am using (what LDD3 calls)
streaming mappings:

I use pci_map_sg(), have the device perform either DMA master reads or
writes to the bus address using PCIe.
After that, I use pci_unmap_sg().

My assumption is that pci_unmap_sg() either makes the cache coherent
or invalidated and thus I do not need to take further actions.
This is on a MPC83xx or 85xx system.

Is this assumption correct?

Regards,

Leon/

-- 
Leon