Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 28 Jun 2003 00:44:21 -0700
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu>
Cc:        freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: API change for bus_dma
Message-ID:  <3EFD4755.49BAF150@mindspring.com>
References:  <3EF3C12F.9060303@btc.adaptec.com> <16124.39930.142492.356163@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> <3EFC9F2D.6020908@btc.adaptec.com> <16124.43999.333761.397624@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> <16124.45051.919899.414795@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Andrew Gallatin wrote:
> Most sparc's have 2 different sorts of DMA modes.  One is cache
> coherent (aka DDI_DMA_CONSISTENT) -- this is what we all know and love
> from PC, alphas, macs, etc.

"contiguous"


> The other mode (DDI_DMA_STREAMING) allows non cache coherent DMA.
> This requires you to call ddi_dma_sync() between your last touch of
> the data and you starting a DMA read from a device.  And vice-versa
> for a DMA write.

"scatter/gather"

> The reason people use DDI_DMA_STREAMING is because coherent DMA
> bandwith tends to be abysmal on most sparcs.

I'm not surprised; in order to present a contiguous physical RAM
buffer to the device DMA engine, you have two choices:

1)	Get lucky
2)	Copy the data before triggering the DMA

The data copy is what kills you.

-- Terry



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3EFD4755.49BAF150>