[PATCH 2/2] ath10k: do not use coherent memory for tx buffers

[Felix Fietkau]

On 2015-11-23 18:25, Peter Oh wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Have you measured the peak throughput?
> The pre-allocated coherent memory concept was introduced as once of peak 
> throughput improvement.
It's all still pre-allocated and pre-mapped.

> IIRC, dma_map_single takes about 4 us on Cortex A7 and dma_unmap_single 
> also takes time to invalid cache.
That's why I didn't put a map/unmap in the hot path. There is only a
cache sync there. With coherent memory, every single word access blocks
until the transaction is complete. With cached/mapped memory, the CPU
can fill the cachelines first, then flush it in one go. This usually
ends up being faster than working with coherent memory directly.

> Please share your tput number before and after, so I don't need to worry 
> about performance degrade.
I don't have an ideal setup for tput tests at the moment, so I can't
give you any numbers. However, on the device that I'm testing on
(IPQ806x based), this patch makes the difference between working and
non-working wifi, fixing the regression introduced by your pre-allocated
coherent memory patch.

- Felix