From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752021AbdKJI1o (ORCPT ); Fri, 10 Nov 2017 03:27:44 -0500 Received: from mail-ua0-f193.google.com ([209.85.217.193]:44442 "EHLO mail-ua0-f193.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750793AbdKJI1j (ORCPT ); Fri, 10 Nov 2017 03:27:39 -0500 X-Google-Smtp-Source: AGs4zMYOPQ7Dla1wzNGropMZyl9J856IGdnvMy/eJ3CYIXLOt9Nm0/otgsUJt/mUx59uPixyB1em6ysnvOcVyNumMag= MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: References: <7278eca76456b412e02d9baa5dc164e83199cbab.1510118606.git.green.hu@gmail.com> From: Greentime Hu Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2017 16:26:58 +0800 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [PATCH 26/31] nds32: Build infrastructure To: Arnd Bergmann Cc: Greentime , Linux Kernel Mailing List , linux-arch , Thomas Gleixner , Jason Cooper , Marc Zyngier , Rob Herring , Networking , Vincent Chen Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 2017-11-09 18:33 GMT+08:00 Arnd Bergmann : > On Thu, Nov 9, 2017 at 10:02 AM, Greentime Hu wrote: >> 2017-11-08 18:16 GMT+08:00 Arnd Bergmann : >>> On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 6:55 AM, Greentime Hu wrote: > >>>> +config GENERIC_CALIBRATE_DELAY >>>> + def_bool y >>> >>> It's better to avoid the delay loop completely and skip the calibration, >>> if your hardware allows. >> >> Thanks. >> Do you mean that this config should be def_bool n? >> why? Almost all arch enable it. > > It depends on what your hardware can do. If you have a way to see how much > time has passed that is guaranteed to be reliable on all machines, then > use that instead. > > On a lot of architectures, it's not possible, so they have to fall back to using > the delay loop. I get it. I will discuss it with our HW colleagues. We may get these informations in some registers. >>>> +config ALIGNMENT_TRAP >>>> + tristate "Kernel support unaligned access handling" >>>> + default y >>>> + help >>>> + Andes processors cannot fetch/store information which is not >>>> + naturally aligned on the bus, i.e., a 4 byte fetch must start at an >>>> + address divisible by 4. On 32-bit Andes processors, these non-aligned >>>> + fetch/store instructions will be emulated in software if you say >>>> + here, which has a severe performance impact. This is necessary for >>>> + correct operation of some network protocols. With an IP-only >>>> + configuration it is safe to say N, otherwise say Y. >>> >>> Which network protocols are you referring to? >> >> I will modify these descriptions. It was written by someone I don't know. :p >> This case only happened when I found is compiler code gen issue or >> wrong pointer usage. > > Ok, should it also be 'default n' then? Yup. I will use 'default n' in the next version patch. >>>> +config HIGHMEM >>>> + bool "High Memory Support" >>>> + depends on MMU && CPU_CACHE_NONALIASING >>>> + help >>>> + The address space of Andes processors is only 4 Gigabytes large >>>> + and it has to accommodate user address space, kernel address >>>> + space as well as some memory mapped IO. That means that, if you >>>> + have a large amount of physical memory and/or IO, not all of the >>>> + memory can be "permanently mapped" by the kernel. The physical >>>> + memory that is not permanently mapped is called "high memory". >>>> + >>>> + Depending on the selected kernel/user memory split, minimum >>>> + vmalloc space and actual amount of RAM, you may not need this >>>> + option which should result in a slightly faster kernel. >>>> + >>>> + If unsure, say N. >>> >>> Generally speaking, highmem support is a mess, and it's better to avoid it. >>> >>> I see that the two device tree files you have list 1GB of memory. Do you think >>> that is a common configuration for actual products? Do you expect any to >>> have more than 1GB (or more than 4GB) in the future, or is that the upper >>> end of the scale? >>> >>> If 1GB is a reasonable upper bound, then you could change the vmsplit >>> to give slightly less address space to user space and have 1GB of direct-mapped >>> kernel memory plus 256MB of vmalloc space reserved for the kernel, >>> and completely avoid highmem. >> >> Thanks. >> We do realy use 1GB ram in some products. >> We also verify CONFIG_HIGHMEM with LTP too. >> It seems fine but I will study vmsplit to see if we should use it. > > For the 1GB configuration, something like ARM's CONFIG_VMSPLIT_3G_OPT > should be optimal, it will result in better performance because it allows you > to completely turn off CONFIG_HIGHMEM. The reason we don't always > use it on ARM is that traditionally we had the 3GB vmsplit, and some > applications > might rely on having the exact amount of available address space that they > expect. For a new architecture that should be less of a problem. > > The interesting case is what happens if you have machines with 1.5GB or > or more physical RAM. You can obviously have another vmsplit configuration > for those, but at some point going to highmem is better than limiting the > user address space. > > Ideally 1.5GB is the point where you start using a 64-bit CPU, but of course > that is not something you have available at the moment. >>>> +config MEMORY_START >>>> + hex "Physical memory start address" >>>> + default "0x00000000" >>>> + help >>>> + Physical memory start address, you may modify it if it is porting to >>>> + a new SoC with different start address. >>>> +endmenu >>> >>> On ARM, we found options like this to be rather problematic since it prevents >>> you from running the same kernel on boards that are otherwise compatible. >>> >>> If the architecture easily allows the memory to start at address 0, could >>> you require this address for all SoCs that want to run Linux, and get >>> rid of the compile-time option? >> >> Thanks. >> The reason we need this config is because we need to define PHYS_OFFSET. >> #define PHYS_OFFSET (CONFIG_MEMORY_START) >> >> It needs to be set in compile-time. I don't know how to get rid of it. > > PHYS_OFFSET doesn't have to be a constant, a lot of architectures make > the __va()/__pa() and related functions use a variable for the offset. > This is also useful to implement KASLR, and booting the kernel from > a random physical address. > > My actual suggestion however was to just mandate that PHYS_OFFSET > is always zero for your architecture, and not support any other value. > This is easy as long as you don't have existing hardware that would > break. Thanks. I will check how other architectures do. I can mandate that PHYS_OFFSET is zero but our customers(SoC company) may not use 0x0 as default DRAM starting address. This assumption is a little bit too strong.