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 $, and complained why it does not have struct page, I guess? So here is
the simple code to do so:
```C
if (*p == ‘@’) {
start_at = memparse(p+1, &p);
e820_add_region(start_at, mem_size, E820_RAM);
} else if (*p == ‘#’) {
start_at = memparse(p+1, &p);
e820_add_region(start_at, mem_size, E820_ACPI);
} else if (*p == ‘$’) {
start_at = memparse(p+1, &p);
ifdef CONFIG_MEMMAP_MEMBLOCK_RESERVED¶
1 | |
else¶
1 | |
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