From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 05:17:07 +0100 From: Nick Piggin Subject: Re: [patch 1/2]: x86: implement pte_special Message-ID: <20080328041707.GG8083@wotan.suse.de> References: <20080328033149.GD8083@wotan.suse.de> <20080327.204431.201380891.davem@davemloft.net> <20080328040442.GE8083@wotan.suse.de> <20080327.210910.101408473.davem@davemloft.net> <20080328041519.GF8083@wotan.suse.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080328041519.GF8083@wotan.suse.de> Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: David Miller Cc: akpm@linux-foundation.org, shaggy@austin.ibm.com, axboe@oracle.com, linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@linux-foundation.org List-ID: On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 05:15:20AM +0100, Nick Piggin wrote: > On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 09:09:10PM -0700, David Miller wrote: > > From: Nick Piggin > > Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 05:04:42 +0100 > > > > > BTW. if you are still interested, then the powerpc64 patch might be a > > > better starting point for you. I don't know how the sparc tlb flush > > > design looks like, but if it doesn't do a synchronous IPI to invalidate > > > other threads, then you can't use the x86 approach. > > > > I have soft bits available on sparc64, that's not my issue. > > > > My issue is that if you implemented this differently, every platform > > would get the optimization, without having to do anything special > > at all, and I think that's such a much nicer way. > > Oh, they wouldn't. It is completely tied to the low level details of > their TLB and pagetable teardown design. That's the unfortunate part > about it. > > The other thing is that the "how do I know if I can refcount the page > behind this (mm,vaddr,pte) tuple" can be quite arch specific as well. > And it is also non-trivial to do because that information can be dynamic > depending on what driver mapped in that given tuple. > > It is *possible*, but not trivial. And, btw, you'd still have to implement the actual fast_gup completely in arch code. So once you do that, you are free not to use pte_special for it anyway. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org