On Fri, 2017-05-05 at 15:25 -0700, Dan Williams wrote: > On Fri, May 5, 2017 at 1:39 PM, Kani, Toshimitsu <toshi.kani@xxxxxxx> > wrote: : > > > --- > > > Changes since the initial RFC: > > > * s/writethru/wt/ since we already have ioremap_wt(), > > > set_memory_wt(), etc. (Ingo) > > > > Sorry I should have said earlier, but I think the term "wt" is > > misleading. Non-temporal stores used in memcpy_wt() provide WC > > semantics, not WT semantics. > > The non-temporal stores do, but memcpy_wt() is using a combination of > non-temporal stores and explicit cache flushing. > > > How about using "nocache" as it's been > > used in __copy_user_nocache()? > > The difference in my mind is that the "_nocache" suffix indicates > opportunistic / optional cache pollution avoidance whereas "_wt" > strictly arranges for caches not to contain dirty data upon > completion of the routine. For example, non-temporal stores on older > x86 cpus could potentially leave dirty data in the cache, so > memcpy_wt on those cpus would need to use explicit cache flushing. I see. I agree that its behavior is different from the existing one with "_nocache". That said, I think "wt" or "write-through" generally means that writes allocate cachelines and keep them clean by writing to memory. So, subsequent reads to the destination will hit the cachelines. This is not the case with this interface. Thanks, -Toshi
