On Tue, Apr 15, 2003 at 03:19:14PM -0700, Steve Taylor wrote:
> Hello All, I am hoping some of you mips-linux gurus will be able to help me
> give me some tips and help me get started on some cache stuff which I want to
> do. (I know decently well about caches - but only at a theoretical Hennessy &
> Patterson level - and have just started looking under arch/mips/mm to
> familiarize myself with the mips-linux implementation). Here's what I want
> to do - I have a CPU with 4 way SA I and D caches, and I want to write a
> module that will lock a certain memory region in these caches (for example,
> let's say I want to lock the ISR in the I-cache). So my questions are a) Is
> the kernel going to crash if I try to mess around with the caches like
> locking out a particular way of the cache or something like that? b) I'm sure
> there are many issues and complications involved in this that I probably
> havent even thought of - any obvious and/or subtle pitfalls? and c) Do you
> think locking out, say, an entire way of a 4-way cache for a dedicated
> frequently used !
> !
> routine improves or degrades overall system performance? TIA, -Steve.
If the cache locking can survive flushing, i.e., locked cache line
remained valid and locked even after cache invalidation ops, I guess
you are probably OK.
I have looked the performance issues with cache locking on a two-way
cache system. There was not much performance gain.
Jun
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