Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 15 Jul 2014 16:46:06 -0700 | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Subject | Re: [RFC PATCH 3/11] x86, mm, pat: Change reserve_memtype() to handle WT type |
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On 07/15/2014 04:36 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote: > On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Toshi Kani <toshi.kani@hp.com> wrote: >> On Tue, 2014-07-15 at 12:56 -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote: >>> On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Toshi Kani <toshi.kani@hp.com> wrote: >>>> This patch changes reserve_memtype() to handle the new WT type. >>>> When (!pat_enabled && new_type), it continues to set either WB >>>> or UC- to *new_type. When pat_enabled, it can reserve a given >>>> non-RAM range for WT. At this point, it may not reserve a RAM >>>> range for WT since reserve_ram_pages_type() uses the page flags >>>> limited to three memory types, WB, WC and UC. >>> >>> FWIW, last time I looked at this, it seemed like all the fancy >>> reserve_ram_pages stuff was unnecessary: shouldn't the RAM type be >>> easy to track in the direct map page tables? >> >> Are you referring the direct map page tables as the kernel page >> directory tables (pgd/pud/..)? >> >> I think it needs to be able to keep track of the memory type per a >> physical memory range, not per a translation, in order to prevent >> aliasing of the memory type. > > Actual RAM (the lowmem kind, which is all of it on x86_64) is mapped > linearly somewhere in kernel address space. The pagetables for that > mapping could be used as the canonical source of the memory type for > the ram range in question. > > This only works for lowmem, so maybe it's not a good idea to rely on it. >
We could do that, but would it be better?
-hpa
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