From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261294AbULWU5c (ORCPT ); Thu, 23 Dec 2004 15:57:32 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261290AbULWU5c (ORCPT ); Thu, 23 Dec 2004 15:57:32 -0500 Received: from waste.org ([216.27.176.166]:11940 "EHLO waste.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261289AbULWU53 (ORCPT ); Thu, 23 Dec 2004 15:57:29 -0500 Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 12:57:13 -0800 From: Matt Mackall To: Christoph Lameter Cc: akpm@osdl.org, linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@osdl.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Prezeroing V2 [0/3]: Why and When it works Message-ID: <20041223205713.GE28322@waste.org> References: <41C20E3E.3070209@yahoo.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 11:29:10AM -0800, Christoph Lameter wrote: > 2. Hardware support for offloading zeroing from the cpu. This avoids > the invalidation of the cpu caches by extensive zeroing operations. I'm wondering if it would be possible to use typical video cards for hardware zeroing. We could set aside a page's worth of zeros in video memory and then use the card's DMA engines to clear pages on the host. This could be done in fbdev drivers, which would register a zeroer with the core. -- Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.