On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 02:12:56PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
Another difference that I do not address here is what cache invalidation does for partical cache lines. On arm32, arm64 and powerpc, a partial cache line always gets written back before invalidation in order to ensure that data before or after the buffer is not discarded. On all other architectures, the assumption is cache lines are never shared between DMA buffer and data that is accessed by the CPU.
I don't think sharing the DMA buffer with other data is safe even with this clean+invalidate on the unaligned cache. Mapping the DMA buffer as FROM_DEVICE or BIDIRECTIONAL can cause the shared cache line to be evicted and override the device written data. This sharing only works if the CPU guarantees not to dirty the corresponding cache line. I'm fine with removing this partial cache line hack from arm64 as it's not safe anyway. We'll see if any driver stops working. If there's some benign sharing (I wouldn't trust it), the cache cleaning prior to mapping and invalidate on unmap would not lose any data. -- Catalin
