consistent_alloc changes for 4xx/8xx
Ralph Blach
rcblach at us.ibm.com
Tue Jan 22 07:45:02 EST 2002
Dan, here are my responces.
>>Another, more challenging, situation also exists because you can't use
>>the __va()/__pa() macros on the addresses returned from consistent_alloc
().
>>On the 4xx/8xx, the virt_to_* macros will call iopa() which will track
down
>>the real physical address in the page table, which continues to work.
On the IBM book E part, __va()/__pa() will have to be obsoleted. The
address space is
36 bits. Better now than later.
>>For testing, I added the ability on the MPC860 to pin the first 8M of
kernel
>>text (of which there is probably on 512K used), up to 24 Mbytes of kernel
>>data, and the 8M IMMR space. Note that this will only work on the 860
>>processors with a 32 entry TLB. I added, but couldn't test for lack of
>>hardware, a similar feature to the 4xx. I wanted to check this in before
the
>>kernel changed too much, and I have volunteers testing it, so any
problems
>>should be corrected shortly. Note that this TLB pinning comes at a cost
of
>>taking TLB entries out of use for applications, so IMHO it isn't
something
>>that should be done without verification of total system performance
improvement.
>>I hope someone can find some benchmarks where this feature actually
provides
>>benefit
Dan, you saw netperf which demonstrated the benefit. These were the very
test you
suggested we run and they showed a >10% performance increase on a 405.
Chip
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