[PATCH V4 5/5] arm: mvebu: Added SMP support for Armada XP
Will Deacon
will.deacon at arm.com
Tue Nov 20 12:09:44 EST 2012
On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 05:07:59PM +0000, Thomas Petazzoni wrote:
> Dear Will Deacon,
>
> On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:01:27 +0000, Will Deacon wrote:
>
> > > I prefer to keep them separate, as we can use coherency without SMP.
> > > That's why I create the coherency_ll.S file instead of putting
> > > everything in this file.
> >
> > Hmm, can you elaborate a bit more on coherency without SMP please? Do
> > these controls also affect IO coherency?
>
> The coherency unit does coherency between CPUs, but also between the
> CPU and the devices for DMA. So for example the MV78230 is a single-core
> variant of the Armada XP, so having CONFIG_SMP for it is useless, but
> you still want the CPU to join the coherency fabric in order to provide
> coherency with I/O.
>
> Thanks to the coherency unit, we have an almost DMA coherent
> architecture (see the HW I/O coherency patches from Grégory for
> details).
Ok, gotcha -- I didn't realise it was all controlled by the same register on
the CPU side.
Thanks for the explanation,
Will
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