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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/DMA-attributes.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/DMA-attributes.txt | 24 |
1 files changed, 24 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/DMA-attributes.txt b/Documentation/DMA-attributes.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..6d772f84b477 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/DMA-attributes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ + DMA attributes + ============== + +This document describes the semantics of the DMA attributes that are +defined in linux/dma-attrs.h. + +DMA_ATTR_WRITE_BARRIER +---------------------- + +DMA_ATTR_WRITE_BARRIER is a (write) barrier attribute for DMA. DMA +to a memory region with the DMA_ATTR_WRITE_BARRIER attribute forces +all pending DMA writes to complete, and thus provides a mechanism to +strictly order DMA from a device across all intervening busses and +bridges. This barrier is not specific to a particular type of +interconnect, it applies to the system as a whole, and so its +implementation must account for the idiosyncracies of the system all +the way from the DMA device to memory. + +As an example of a situation where DMA_ATTR_WRITE_BARRIER would be +useful, suppose that a device does a DMA write to indicate that data is +ready and available in memory. The DMA of the "completion indication" +could race with data DMA. Mapping the memory used for completion +indications with DMA_ATTR_WRITE_BARRIER would prevent the race. + |