Problem with non aligned DMA in usbnet on ARM

[Oliver Neukum]

Am Freitag, 13. August 2010, 12:06:54 schrieb Martin Fuzzey:

> So I think a policy needs to be defined to ensure this and enforced in
> the code. I can see two possible methods:
> 
> 1) Require that usb drivers submit buffers obtained from kmalloc() and
> friends with no extra offsets. If they want some other alignment later
> they can use memmove in the completion handler. Enforce this in the core
> by checking the buffer pointers are aligned to ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN
> 
> or
> 
> 2) Require that usb_submit_urb() accept byte aligned buffers. Enforce
> this by a new test in usbtest (which all HCDs are expected to pass).
> Implement it either in individual HCDs that require it or by letting
> HCDs inform the core of their requirements and have the core do the
> alignment (as it already does the dma mapping). Of course HCDs that can
> implement byte aligned transfers (either natively or using tricks such
> as the one Russell suggested) should do so.
> 
> I think 2) is the better solution because:
> a) Solution 1 will impose a runtime overhead even on platforms / HCDs
> that don't need it (including the most common cases)
> b) There are more drivers than HCDs

Yes. But it doesn't prevent you from publishing this information so
drivers can help the lower levels.
	Regards
		Oliver