Pcache Configuration

This doc explains what configuration options pcache has, and how to config them properly. Pcache is only enabled in Lego’s processor manager and currently it uses DRAM to emulate the last-level cache (or, L4).

Kconfig

CONFIG_MEMMAP_MEMBLOCK_RESERVED

DEFAULT: Y

By default, boot command line option memmap $ will reserve a range of physical memory. This reserved memory will be marked reserved in e820 table, which means this range will not be registered into memblock. Only memory that has been registered into memblock will be assigned struct page with it (both memblock.memory and memblock.reserve will have). And do note that this part of reserved memory can be mapped as 1GB page at boot time.

In other words, by default (the linux semantic), users need to ioremap the memmap $ reserved physical memory, and use the returned kernel virtual address afterwards. And do note that the ioremap() only support 4KB mapping.

In Lego, if this option is enabled, the memory marked by memmap $ will NOT be marked reserved into e820 table, instead, it will be pushed into memblock, which means it is mapped into kernel direct mapping and has struct page.

For those who have done DAX, or NVM related stuff, you must have struggled with memmap $, and complained why it does not have struct page, I guess? So here is the simple code to do so:

if (*p == '@') {
        start_at = memparse(p+1, &p);
        e820_add_region(start_at, mem_size, E820_RAM);
} else if (*p == '#') {
        start_at = memparse(p+1, &p);
        e820_add_region(start_at, mem_size, E820_ACPI);
} else if (*p == '$') {
        start_at = memparse(p+1, &p);

#ifdef CONFIG_MEMMAP_MEMBLOCK_RESERVED
        memblock_reserve(start_at, mem_size);
#else
        e820_add_region(start_at, mem_size, E820_RESERVED);
#endif

But why we are having this? Because I think the direct 1GB mapping may have better performance: huge page mapping can truly save us a lot TLB misses. However, the real performance number is unknown.

If unsure, say Y.

–
Yizhou Shan
Created: Feb 01, 2018
Last Updated: Feb 01, 2018