On Tue, 21 Apr 2015, Paul E. McKenney wrote: > Thoughts? Use DAX for memory instead of the other approaches? That way it is explicitly clear what information is put on the CAPI device. > Although such a device will provide CPU's with cache-coherent Maybe call this coprocessor like IBM does? It is like a processor after all in terms of its participation in cache coherent? > access to on-device memory, the resulting memory latency is > expected to be slower than the normal memory that is tightly > coupled to the CPUs. Nevertheless, data that is only occasionally > accessed by CPUs should be stored in the device's memory. > On the other hand, data that is accessed rarely by the device but > frequently by the CPUs should be stored in normal system memory. I would expect many devices to not have *normal memory* at all (those that simply process some data or otherwise interface with external hardware like f.e. a NIC). Other devices like GPUs have local memory but what is in GPU memory is very specific and general OS structures should not be allocated there. What I mostly would like to see is that these devices will have the ability to participate in the cpu cache coherency scheme. I.e. they will have l1/l2/l3 caches that will allow fast data exchange between the coprocessor and the regular processors in the system. > > a. It should be possible to migrate all data away > from the device's memory at any time. That would be device specific and only a special device driver for that device could save the state of the device (if that is necessary. It would not be for something like a NIC). > b. Normal memory allocation should avoid using the > device's memory, as this would interfere > with the needed migration. It may nevertheless > be desirable to use the device's memory > if system memory is exhausted, however, in some > cases, even this "emergency" use is best avoided. > In fact, a good solution will provide some means > for avoiding this for those cases where it is > necessary to evacuate memory when offlining the > device. Ok that seems to mean that none of the approaches suggested later would be useful. > 3. The device's memory is treated like normal system > memory by the Linux kernel, for example, each page has a > "struct page" associate with it. (In contrast, the > traditional approach has used special-purpose OS mechanisms > to manage the device's memory, and this memory was treated > as MMIO space by the kernel.) Why do we need a struct page? If so then maybe equip DAX with a struct page so that the contents of the device memory can be controlled via a filesystem? (may be custom to the needs of the device). -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>