State of RFC PATCH Remove CONFIG_DCACHE_WORD_ACCESS

[Christophe Leroy]

Le 12/09/2022 à 15:46, Lukas Bulwahn a écrit :
> Hi Joe, hi Ben,
> 
> While reviewing some kernel config, I came across
> CONFIG_DCACHE_WORD_ACCESS and tried to understand its purpose.
> 
> Then, I discovered this RFC patch from 2014 that seems never to have
> been integrated:
> 
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/1393964591.20435.58.camel@joe-AO722/
> [RFC] Remove CONFIG_DCACHE_WORD_ACCESS
> 
> The discussion seemed to just not continue and the patch was just not
> integrated by anyone.
> 
> In the meantime, the use of CONFIG_DCACHE_WORD_ACCESS has spread into
> a few more files, but replacing it with
> CONFIG_HAVE_EFFICIENT_UNALIGNED_ACCESS still seems feasible.
> 
> Are you aware of reasons that this patch from 2014 should not be integrated?
> 
> I would spend some time to move the integration of this patch further
> if you consider that the patch is not completely wrong.
> 

As far as I can see, for the time being this is not equivalent on powerpc:

select HAVE_EFFICIENT_UNALIGNED_ACCESS  if !(CPU_LITTLE_ENDIAN && 
POWER7_CPU)

select DCACHE_WORD_ACCESS               if PPC64 && CPU_LITTLE_ENDIAN

This will need to be investigated I guess.

In the meantime I'll try to see if it makes any difference for ppc32.

Christophe