On Fri, 2011-12-23 at 09:35 -0700, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > I really think this wants to be a separate function. > dma_alloc_coherent > is for allocating memory to be shared between the kernel and a driver; > we already have dma_map_sg for mapping userspace I/O as an alternative > interface. This feels like it's something different again rather than > an option to dma_alloc_coherent. Depends. There can be some interesting issues with some of the ARM stuff out there (and to a lesser extent older ppc embedded stuff). For example, some devices really want a physically contiguous chunk, and are not cache coherent. In that case, you can't keep the linear mapping around. But you also don't waste your precious kernel virtual space creating a separate non-cachable mapping for those. In general, dma mapping attributes as a generic feature make sense, whether this specific attribute does or not though. And we probably want space for platform specific attributes, for example, FSL embedded iommu's have "interesting" features for directing data toward a specific core cache etc... that we might want to expose using such attributes. Cheers, Ben.
