linux-mips@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > Hi, > > We've got an SMP8634 based set-top box from a 3rd party and are trying to > port some middleware to it. > Everything seems to work out fine, except for one thing ... the amount of > memory for kernel space. > > The box physically has two 64MB chips and two 32MB chips. > The kernel is only seeing the two 32MB chips, apparently attached to DRAM0. > > The problem is the following: > > 1) The middleware requires more memory in kernel space to allocalte big > graphical surfaces. > 2) Whatever runs before the kernel is also from a 3rd party and we don't > have access to it. > 3) We can't change anything on the box hardware. > > This means, we would only be able to patch starting from the Linux kernel. > > Do you see any way to swap what the kernel sees to be 128MB instead of 64MB > and the user space 64MB minus whatever is allocated for the initial RAM > disc? > The 64MB for user space are sufficient, we just need more then 64 MB on > kernel space. > It depends if the 128MB is on DRAM0 or DRAM1. Typically DRAM1 is not usable by the kernel, although others have tried to access it as high-mem. If DRAM0 is 128MB, *and* you have access to the kernel command line, you might try to append something like 'mem=96M'. You may need to leave some space in DRAM0 for the media components. If not try jacking it up to mem=128M. Said media components do need memory too, so it may not be possible to get more for the kernel and have it all work together. David Daney
