1 =========================
2 Dynamic DMA mapping Guide
3 =========================
5 :Author: David S. Miller <davem@redhat.com>
6 :Author: Richard Henderson <rth@cygnus.com>
7 :Author: Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com>
9 This is a guide to device driver writers on how to use the DMA API
10 with example pseudo-code. For a concise description of the API, see
11 Documentation/core-api/dma-api.rst.
16 There are several kinds of addresses involved in the DMA API, and it's
17 important to understand the differences.
19 The kernel normally uses virtual addresses. Any address returned by
20 kmalloc(), vmalloc(), and similar interfaces is a virtual address and can
21 be stored in a ``void *``.
23 The virtual memory system (TLB, page tables, etc.) translates virtual
24 addresses to CPU physical addresses, which are stored as "phys_addr_t" or
25 "resource_size_t". The kernel manages device resources like registers as
26 physical addresses. These are the addresses in /proc/iomem. The physical
27 address is not directly useful to a driver; it must use ioremap() to map
28 the space and produce a virtual address.
30 I/O devices use a third kind of address: a "bus address". If a device has
31 registers at an MMIO address, or if it performs DMA to read or write system
32 memory, the addresses used by the device are bus addresses. In some
33 systems, bus addresses are identical to CPU physical addresses, but in
34 general they are not. IOMMUs and host bridges can produce arbitrary
35 mappings between physical and bus addresses.
37 From a device's point of view, DMA uses the bus address space, but it may
38 be restricted to a subset of that space. For example, even if a system
39 supports 64-bit addresses for main memory and PCI BARs, it may use an IOMMU
40 so devices only need to use 32-bit DMA addresses.
42 Here's a picture and some examples::
45 Virtual Physical Address
49 +-------+ +------+ +------+
50 | | |MMIO | Offset | |
51 | | Virtual |Space | applied | |
52 C +-------+ --------> B +------+ ----------> +------+ A
53 | | mapping | | by host | |
54 +-----+ | | | | bridge | | +--------+
55 | | | | +------+ | | | |
56 | CPU | | | | RAM | | | | Device |
58 +-----+ +-------+ +------+ +------+ +--------+
59 | | Virtual |Buffer| Mapping | |
60 X +-------+ --------> Y +------+ <---------- +------+ Z
61 | | mapping | RAM | by IOMMU
66 During the enumeration process, the kernel learns about I/O devices and
67 their MMIO space and the host bridges that connect them to the system. For
68 example, if a PCI device has a BAR, the kernel reads the bus address (A)
69 from the BAR and converts it to a CPU physical address (B). The address B
70 is stored in a struct resource and usually exposed via /proc/iomem. When a
71 driver claims a device, it typically uses ioremap() to map physical address
72 B at a virtual address (C). It can then use, e.g., ioread32(C), to access
73 the device registers at bus address A.
75 If the device supports DMA, the driver sets up a buffer using kmalloc() or
76 a similar interface, which returns a virtual address (X). The virtual
77 memory system maps X to a physical address (Y) in system RAM. The driver
78 can use virtual address X to access the buffer, but the device itself
79 cannot because DMA doesn't go through the CPU virtual memory system.
81 In some simple systems, the device can do DMA directly to physical address
82 Y. But in many others, there is IOMMU hardware that translates DMA
83 addresses to physical addresses, e.g., it translates Z to Y. This is part
84 of the reason for the DMA API: the driver can give a virtual address X to
85 an interface like dma_map_single(), which sets up any required IOMMU
86 mapping and returns the DMA address Z. The driver then tells the device to
87 do DMA to Z, and the IOMMU maps it to the buffer at address Y in system
90 So that Linux can use the dynamic DMA mapping, it needs some help from the
91 drivers, namely it has to take into account that DMA addresses should be
92 mapped only for the time they are actually used and unmapped after the DMA
95 The following API will work of course even on platforms where no such
98 Note that the DMA API works with any bus independent of the underlying
99 microprocessor architecture. You should use the DMA API rather than the
100 bus-specific DMA API, i.e., use the dma_map_*() interfaces rather than the
101 pci_map_*() interfaces.
103 First of all, you should make sure::
105 #include <linux/dma-mapping.h>
107 is in your driver, which provides the definition of dma_addr_t. This type
108 can hold any valid DMA address for the platform and should be used
109 everywhere you hold a DMA address returned from the DMA mapping functions.
111 What memory is DMA'able?
112 ========================
114 The first piece of information you must know is what kernel memory can
115 be used with the DMA mapping facilities. There has been an unwritten
116 set of rules regarding this, and this text is an attempt to finally
119 If you acquired your memory via the page allocator
120 (i.e. __get_free_page*()) or the generic memory allocators
121 (i.e. kmalloc() or kmem_cache_alloc()) then you may DMA to/from
122 that memory using the addresses returned from those routines.
124 This means specifically that you may _not_ use the memory/addresses
125 returned from vmalloc() for DMA. It is possible to DMA to the
126 _underlying_ memory mapped into a vmalloc() area, but this requires
127 walking page tables to get the physical addresses, and then
128 translating each of those pages back to a kernel address using
129 something like __va(). [ EDIT: Update this when we integrate
130 Gerd Knorr's generic code which does this. ]
132 This rule also means that you may use neither kernel image addresses
133 (items in data/text/bss segments), nor module image addresses, nor
134 stack addresses for DMA. These could all be mapped somewhere entirely
135 different than the rest of physical memory. Even if those classes of
136 memory could physically work with DMA, you'd need to ensure the I/O
137 buffers were cacheline-aligned. Without that, you'd see cacheline
138 sharing problems (data corruption) on CPUs with DMA-incoherent caches.
139 (The CPU could write to one word, DMA would write to a different one
140 in the same cache line, and one of them could be overwritten.)
142 Also, this means that you cannot take the return of a kmap()
143 call and DMA to/from that. This is similar to vmalloc().
145 What about block I/O and networking buffers? The block I/O and
146 networking subsystems make sure that the buffers they use are valid
147 for you to DMA from/to.
149 DMA addressing capabilities
150 ===========================
152 By default, the kernel assumes that your device can address 32-bits of DMA
153 addressing. For a 64-bit capable device, this needs to be increased, and for
154 a device with limitations, it needs to be decreased.
156 Special note about PCI: PCI-X specification requires PCI-X devices to support
157 64-bit addressing (DAC) for all transactions. And at least one platform (SGI
158 SN2) requires 64-bit consistent allocations to operate correctly when the IO
159 bus is in PCI-X mode.
161 For correct operation, you must set the DMA mask to inform the kernel about
162 your devices DMA addressing capabilities.
164 This is performed via a call to dma_set_mask_and_coherent()::
166 int dma_set_mask_and_coherent(struct device *dev, u64 mask);
168 which will set the mask for both streaming and coherent APIs together. If you
169 have some special requirements, then the following two separate calls can be
172 The setup for streaming mappings is performed via a call to
175 int dma_set_mask(struct device *dev, u64 mask);
177 The setup for consistent allocations is performed via a call
178 to dma_set_coherent_mask()::
180 int dma_set_coherent_mask(struct device *dev, u64 mask);
182 Here, dev is a pointer to the device struct of your device, and mask is a bit
183 mask describing which bits of an address your device supports. Often the
184 device struct of your device is embedded in the bus-specific device struct of
185 your device. For example, &pdev->dev is a pointer to the device struct of a
186 PCI device (pdev is a pointer to the PCI device struct of your device).
188 These calls usually return zero to indicate your device can perform DMA
189 properly on the machine given the address mask you provided, but they might
190 return an error if the mask is too small to be supportable on the given
191 system. If it returns non-zero, your device cannot perform DMA properly on
192 this platform, and attempting to do so will result in undefined behavior.
193 You must not use DMA on this device unless the dma_set_mask family of
194 functions has returned success.
196 This means that in the failure case, you have two options:
198 1) Use some non-DMA mode for data transfer, if possible.
199 2) Ignore this device and do not initialize it.
201 It is recommended that your driver print a kernel KERN_WARNING message when
202 setting the DMA mask fails. In this manner, if a user of your driver reports
203 that performance is bad or that the device is not even detected, you can ask
204 them for the kernel messages to find out exactly why.
206 The 24-bit addressing device would do something like this::
208 if (dma_set_mask_and_coherent(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(24))) {
209 dev_warn(dev, "mydev: No suitable DMA available\n");
210 goto ignore_this_device;
213 The standard 64-bit addressing device would do something like this::
215 dma_set_mask_and_coherent(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(64))
217 dma_set_mask_and_coherent() never return fail when DMA_BIT_MASK(64). Typical
221 if (dma_set_mask_and_coherent(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(64)))
222 dma_set_mask_and_coherent(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(32))
224 dma_set_mask_and_coherent() will never return failure when bigger than 32.
225 So typical code like::
227 /* Recommended code */
229 dma_set_mask_and_coherent(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(64));
231 dma_set_mask_and_coherent(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(32));
233 If the device only supports 32-bit addressing for descriptors in the
234 coherent allocations, but supports full 64-bits for streaming mappings
235 it would look like this::
237 if (dma_set_mask(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(64))) {
238 dev_warn(dev, "mydev: No suitable DMA available\n");
239 goto ignore_this_device;
242 The coherent mask will always be able to set the same or a smaller mask as
243 the streaming mask. However for the rare case that a device driver only
244 uses consistent allocations, one would have to check the return value from
245 dma_set_coherent_mask().
247 Finally, if your device can only drive the low 24-bits of
248 address you might do something like::
250 if (dma_set_mask(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(24))) {
251 dev_warn(dev, "mydev: 24-bit DMA addressing not available\n");
252 goto ignore_this_device;
255 When dma_set_mask() or dma_set_mask_and_coherent() is successful, and
256 returns zero, the kernel saves away this mask you have provided. The
257 kernel will use this information later when you make DMA mappings.
259 There is a case which we are aware of at this time, which is worth
260 mentioning in this documentation. If your device supports multiple
261 functions (for example a sound card provides playback and record
262 functions) and the various different functions have _different_
263 DMA addressing limitations, you may wish to probe each mask and
264 only provide the functionality which the machine can handle. It
265 is important that the last call to dma_set_mask() be for the
268 Here is pseudo-code showing how this might be done::
270 #define PLAYBACK_ADDRESS_BITS DMA_BIT_MASK(32)
271 #define RECORD_ADDRESS_BITS DMA_BIT_MASK(24)
273 struct my_sound_card *card;
277 if (!dma_set_mask(dev, PLAYBACK_ADDRESS_BITS)) {
278 card->playback_enabled = 1;
280 card->playback_enabled = 0;
281 dev_warn(dev, "%s: Playback disabled due to DMA limitations\n",
284 if (!dma_set_mask(dev, RECORD_ADDRESS_BITS)) {
285 card->record_enabled = 1;
287 card->record_enabled = 0;
288 dev_warn(dev, "%s: Record disabled due to DMA limitations\n",
292 A sound card was used as an example here because this genre of PCI
293 devices seems to be littered with ISA chips given a PCI front end,
294 and thus retaining the 16MB DMA addressing limitations of ISA.
296 Types of DMA mappings
297 =====================
299 There are two types of DMA mappings:
301 - Consistent DMA mappings which are usually mapped at driver
302 initialization, unmapped at the end and for which the hardware should
303 guarantee that the device and the CPU can access the data
304 in parallel and will see updates made by each other without any
305 explicit software flushing.
307 Think of "consistent" as "synchronous" or "coherent".
309 The current default is to return consistent memory in the low 32
310 bits of the DMA space. However, for future compatibility you should
311 set the consistent mask even if this default is fine for your
314 Good examples of what to use consistent mappings for are:
316 - Network card DMA ring descriptors.
317 - SCSI adapter mailbox command data structures.
318 - Device firmware microcode executed out of
321 The invariant these examples all require is that any CPU store
322 to memory is immediately visible to the device, and vice
323 versa. Consistent mappings guarantee this.
327 Consistent DMA memory does not preclude the usage of
328 proper memory barriers. The CPU may reorder stores to
329 consistent memory just as it may normal memory. Example:
330 if it is important for the device to see the first word
331 of a descriptor updated before the second, you must do
334 desc->word0 = address;
336 desc->word1 = DESC_VALID;
338 in order to get correct behavior on all platforms.
340 Also, on some platforms your driver may need to flush CPU write
341 buffers in much the same way as it needs to flush write buffers
342 found in PCI bridges (such as by reading a register's value
345 - Streaming DMA mappings which are usually mapped for one DMA
346 transfer, unmapped right after it (unless you use dma_sync_* below)
347 and for which hardware can optimize for sequential accesses.
349 Think of "streaming" as "asynchronous" or "outside the coherency
352 Good examples of what to use streaming mappings for are:
354 - Networking buffers transmitted/received by a device.
355 - Filesystem buffers written/read by a SCSI device.
357 The interfaces for using this type of mapping were designed in
358 such a way that an implementation can make whatever performance
359 optimizations the hardware allows. To this end, when using
360 such mappings you must be explicit about what you want to happen.
362 Neither type of DMA mapping has alignment restrictions that come from
363 the underlying bus, although some devices may have such restrictions.
364 Also, systems with caches that aren't DMA-coherent will work better
365 when the underlying buffers don't share cache lines with other data.
368 Using Consistent DMA mappings
369 =============================
371 To allocate and map large (PAGE_SIZE or so) consistent DMA regions,
374 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
376 cpu_addr = dma_alloc_coherent(dev, size, &dma_handle, gfp);
378 where device is a ``struct device *``. This may be called in interrupt
379 context with the GFP_ATOMIC flag.
381 Size is the length of the region you want to allocate, in bytes.
383 This routine will allocate RAM for that region, so it acts similarly to
384 __get_free_pages() (but takes size instead of a page order). If your
385 driver needs regions sized smaller than a page, you may prefer using
386 the dma_pool interface, described below.
388 The consistent DMA mapping interfaces, will by default return a DMA address
389 which is 32-bit addressable. Even if the device indicates (via the DMA mask)
390 that it may address the upper 32-bits, consistent allocation will only
391 return > 32-bit addresses for DMA if the consistent DMA mask has been
392 explicitly changed via dma_set_coherent_mask(). This is true of the
393 dma_pool interface as well.
395 dma_alloc_coherent() returns two values: the virtual address which you
396 can use to access it from the CPU and dma_handle which you pass to the
399 The CPU virtual address and the DMA address are both
400 guaranteed to be aligned to the smallest PAGE_SIZE order which
401 is greater than or equal to the requested size. This invariant
402 exists (for example) to guarantee that if you allocate a chunk
403 which is smaller than or equal to 64 kilobytes, the extent of the
404 buffer you receive will not cross a 64K boundary.
406 To unmap and free such a DMA region, you call::
408 dma_free_coherent(dev, size, cpu_addr, dma_handle);
410 where dev, size are the same as in the above call and cpu_addr and
411 dma_handle are the values dma_alloc_coherent() returned to you.
412 This function may not be called in interrupt context.
414 If your driver needs lots of smaller memory regions, you can write
415 custom code to subdivide pages returned by dma_alloc_coherent(),
416 or you can use the dma_pool API to do that. A dma_pool is like
417 a kmem_cache, but it uses dma_alloc_coherent(), not __get_free_pages().
418 Also, it understands common hardware constraints for alignment,
419 like queue heads needing to be aligned on N byte boundaries.
421 Create a dma_pool like this::
423 struct dma_pool *pool;
425 pool = dma_pool_create(name, dev, size, align, boundary);
427 The "name" is for diagnostics (like a kmem_cache name); dev and size
428 are as above. The device's hardware alignment requirement for this
429 type of data is "align" (which is expressed in bytes, and must be a
430 power of two). If your device has no boundary crossing restrictions,
431 pass 0 for boundary; passing 4096 says memory allocated from this pool
432 must not cross 4KByte boundaries (but at that time it may be better to
433 use dma_alloc_coherent() directly instead).
435 Allocate memory from a DMA pool like this::
437 cpu_addr = dma_pool_alloc(pool, flags, &dma_handle);
439 flags are GFP_KERNEL if blocking is permitted (not in_interrupt nor
440 holding SMP locks), GFP_ATOMIC otherwise. Like dma_alloc_coherent(),
441 this returns two values, cpu_addr and dma_handle.
443 Free memory that was allocated from a dma_pool like this::
445 dma_pool_free(pool, cpu_addr, dma_handle);
447 where pool is what you passed to dma_pool_alloc(), and cpu_addr and
448 dma_handle are the values dma_pool_alloc() returned. This function
449 may be called in interrupt context.
451 Destroy a dma_pool by calling::
453 dma_pool_destroy(pool);
455 Make sure you've called dma_pool_free() for all memory allocated
456 from a pool before you destroy the pool. This function may not
457 be called in interrupt context.
462 The interfaces described in subsequent portions of this document
463 take a DMA direction argument, which is an integer and takes on
464 one of the following values::
471 You should provide the exact DMA direction if you know it.
473 DMA_TO_DEVICE means "from main memory to the device"
474 DMA_FROM_DEVICE means "from the device to main memory"
475 It is the direction in which the data moves during the DMA
478 You are _strongly_ encouraged to specify this as precisely
481 If you absolutely cannot know the direction of the DMA transfer,
482 specify DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL. It means that the DMA can go in
483 either direction. The platform guarantees that you may legally
484 specify this, and that it will work, but this may be at the
485 cost of performance for example.
487 The value DMA_NONE is to be used for debugging. One can
488 hold this in a data structure before you come to know the
489 precise direction, and this will help catch cases where your
490 direction tracking logic has failed to set things up properly.
492 Another advantage of specifying this value precisely (outside of
493 potential platform-specific optimizations of such) is for debugging.
494 Some platforms actually have a write permission boolean which DMA
495 mappings can be marked with, much like page protections in the user
496 program address space. Such platforms can and do report errors in the
497 kernel logs when the DMA controller hardware detects violation of the
500 Only streaming mappings specify a direction, consistent mappings
501 implicitly have a direction attribute setting of
504 The SCSI subsystem tells you the direction to use in the
505 'sc_data_direction' member of the SCSI command your driver is
508 For Networking drivers, it's a rather simple affair. For transmit
509 packets, map/unmap them with the DMA_TO_DEVICE direction
510 specifier. For receive packets, just the opposite, map/unmap them
511 with the DMA_FROM_DEVICE direction specifier.
513 Using Streaming DMA mappings
514 ============================
516 The streaming DMA mapping routines can be called from interrupt
517 context. There are two versions of each map/unmap, one which will
518 map/unmap a single memory region, and one which will map/unmap a
521 To map a single region, you do::
523 struct device *dev = &my_dev->dev;
524 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
525 void *addr = buffer->ptr;
526 size_t size = buffer->len;
528 dma_handle = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
529 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle)) {
531 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
532 * delay and try again later or
535 goto map_error_handling;
540 dma_unmap_single(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
542 You should call dma_mapping_error() as dma_map_single() could fail and return
543 error. Doing so will ensure that the mapping code will work correctly on all
544 DMA implementations without any dependency on the specifics of the underlying
545 implementation. Using the returned address without checking for errors could
546 result in failures ranging from panics to silent data corruption. The same
547 applies to dma_map_page() as well.
549 You should call dma_unmap_single() when the DMA activity is finished, e.g.,
550 from the interrupt which told you that the DMA transfer is done.
552 Using CPU pointers like this for single mappings has a disadvantage:
553 you cannot reference HIGHMEM memory in this way. Thus, there is a
554 map/unmap interface pair akin to dma_{map,unmap}_single(). These
555 interfaces deal with page/offset pairs instead of CPU pointers.
558 struct device *dev = &my_dev->dev;
559 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
560 struct page *page = buffer->page;
561 unsigned long offset = buffer->offset;
562 size_t size = buffer->len;
564 dma_handle = dma_map_page(dev, page, offset, size, direction);
565 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle)) {
567 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
568 * delay and try again later or
571 goto map_error_handling;
576 dma_unmap_page(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
578 Here, "offset" means byte offset within the given page.
580 You should call dma_mapping_error() as dma_map_page() could fail and return
581 error as outlined under the dma_map_single() discussion.
583 You should call dma_unmap_page() when the DMA activity is finished, e.g.,
584 from the interrupt which told you that the DMA transfer is done.
586 With scatterlists, you map a region gathered from several regions by::
588 int i, count = dma_map_sg(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
589 struct scatterlist *sg;
591 for_each_sg(sglist, sg, count, i) {
592 hw_address[i] = sg_dma_address(sg);
593 hw_len[i] = sg_dma_len(sg);
596 where nents is the number of entries in the sglist.
598 The implementation is free to merge several consecutive sglist entries
599 into one (e.g. if DMA mapping is done with PAGE_SIZE granularity, any
600 consecutive sglist entries can be merged into one provided the first one
601 ends and the second one starts on a page boundary - in fact this is a huge
602 advantage for cards which either cannot do scatter-gather or have very
603 limited number of scatter-gather entries) and returns the actual number
604 of sg entries it mapped them to. On failure 0 is returned.
606 Then you should loop count times (note: this can be less than nents times)
607 and use sg_dma_address() and sg_dma_len() macros where you previously
608 accessed sg->address and sg->length as shown above.
610 To unmap a scatterlist, just call::
612 dma_unmap_sg(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
614 Again, make sure DMA activity has already finished.
618 The 'nents' argument to the dma_unmap_sg call must be
619 the _same_ one you passed into the dma_map_sg call,
620 it should _NOT_ be the 'count' value _returned_ from the
623 Every dma_map_{single,sg}() call should have its dma_unmap_{single,sg}()
624 counterpart, because the DMA address space is a shared resource and
625 you could render the machine unusable by consuming all DMA addresses.
627 If you need to use the same streaming DMA region multiple times and touch
628 the data in between the DMA transfers, the buffer needs to be synced
629 properly in order for the CPU and device to see the most up-to-date and
630 correct copy of the DMA buffer.
632 So, firstly, just map it with dma_map_{single,sg}(), and after each DMA
633 transfer call either::
635 dma_sync_single_for_cpu(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
639 dma_sync_sg_for_cpu(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
643 Then, if you wish to let the device get at the DMA area again,
644 finish accessing the data with the CPU, and then before actually
645 giving the buffer to the hardware call either::
647 dma_sync_single_for_device(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
651 dma_sync_sg_for_device(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
657 The 'nents' argument to dma_sync_sg_for_cpu() and
658 dma_sync_sg_for_device() must be the same passed to
659 dma_map_sg(). It is _NOT_ the count returned by
662 After the last DMA transfer call one of the DMA unmap routines
663 dma_unmap_{single,sg}(). If you don't touch the data from the first
664 dma_map_*() call till dma_unmap_*(), then you don't have to call the
665 dma_sync_*() routines at all.
667 Here is pseudo code which shows a situation in which you would need
668 to use the dma_sync_*() interfaces::
670 my_card_setup_receive_buffer(struct my_card *cp, char *buffer, int len)
674 mapping = dma_map_single(cp->dev, buffer, len, DMA_FROM_DEVICE);
675 if (dma_mapping_error(cp->dev, mapping)) {
677 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
678 * delay and try again later or
681 goto map_error_handling;
686 cp->rx_dma = mapping;
688 give_rx_buf_to_card(cp);
693 my_card_interrupt_handler(int irq, void *devid, struct pt_regs *regs)
695 struct my_card *cp = devid;
698 if (read_card_status(cp) == RX_BUF_TRANSFERRED) {
699 struct my_card_header *hp;
701 /* Examine the header to see if we wish
702 * to accept the data. But synchronize
703 * the DMA transfer with the CPU first
704 * so that we see updated contents.
706 dma_sync_single_for_cpu(&cp->dev, cp->rx_dma,
710 /* Now it is safe to examine the buffer. */
711 hp = (struct my_card_header *) cp->rx_buf;
712 if (header_is_ok(hp)) {
713 dma_unmap_single(&cp->dev, cp->rx_dma, cp->rx_len,
715 pass_to_upper_layers(cp->rx_buf);
716 make_and_setup_new_rx_buf(cp);
718 /* CPU should not write to
719 * DMA_FROM_DEVICE-mapped area,
720 * so dma_sync_single_for_device() is
721 * not needed here. It would be required
722 * for DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL mapping if
723 * the memory was modified.
725 give_rx_buf_to_card(cp);
733 DMA address space is limited on some architectures and an allocation
734 failure can be determined by:
736 - checking if dma_alloc_coherent() returns NULL or dma_map_sg returns 0
738 - checking the dma_addr_t returned from dma_map_single() and dma_map_page()
739 by using dma_mapping_error()::
741 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
743 dma_handle = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
744 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle)) {
746 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
747 * delay and try again later or
750 goto map_error_handling;
753 - unmap pages that are already mapped, when mapping error occurs in the middle
754 of a multiple page mapping attempt. These example are applicable to
755 dma_map_page() as well.
759 dma_addr_t dma_handle1;
760 dma_addr_t dma_handle2;
762 dma_handle1 = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
763 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle1)) {
765 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
766 * delay and try again later or
769 goto map_error_handling1;
771 dma_handle2 = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
772 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle2)) {
774 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
775 * delay and try again later or
778 goto map_error_handling2;
784 dma_unmap_single(dma_handle1);
790 * if buffers are allocated in a loop, unmap all mapped buffers when
791 * mapping error is detected in the middle
795 dma_addr_t array[DMA_BUFFERS];
798 for (i = 0; i < DMA_BUFFERS; i++) {
802 dma_addr = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
803 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_addr)) {
805 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
806 * delay and try again later or
809 goto map_error_handling;
811 array[i].dma_addr = dma_addr;
819 for (i = 0; i < save_index; i++) {
823 dma_unmap_single(array[i].dma_addr);
826 Networking drivers must call dev_kfree_skb() to free the socket buffer
827 and return NETDEV_TX_OK if the DMA mapping fails on the transmit hook
828 (ndo_start_xmit). This means that the socket buffer is just dropped in
831 SCSI drivers must return SCSI_MLQUEUE_HOST_BUSY if the DMA mapping
832 fails in the queuecommand hook. This means that the SCSI subsystem
833 passes the command to the driver again later.
835 Optimizing Unmap State Space Consumption
836 ========================================
838 On many platforms, dma_unmap_{single,page}() is simply a nop.
839 Therefore, keeping track of the mapping address and length is a waste
840 of space. Instead of filling your drivers up with ifdefs and the like
841 to "work around" this (which would defeat the whole purpose of a
842 portable API) the following facilities are provided.
844 Actually, instead of describing the macros one by one, we'll
845 transform some example code.
847 1) Use DEFINE_DMA_UNMAP_{ADDR,LEN} in state saving structures.
860 DEFINE_DMA_UNMAP_ADDR(mapping);
861 DEFINE_DMA_UNMAP_LEN(len);
864 2) Use dma_unmap_{addr,len}_set() to set these values.
867 ringp->mapping = FOO;
872 dma_unmap_addr_set(ringp, mapping, FOO);
873 dma_unmap_len_set(ringp, len, BAR);
875 3) Use dma_unmap_{addr,len}() to access these values.
878 dma_unmap_single(dev, ringp->mapping, ringp->len,
883 dma_unmap_single(dev,
884 dma_unmap_addr(ringp, mapping),
885 dma_unmap_len(ringp, len),
888 It really should be self-explanatory. We treat the ADDR and LEN
889 separately, because it is possible for an implementation to only
890 need the address in order to perform the unmap operation.
895 If you are just writing drivers for Linux and do not maintain
896 an architecture port for the kernel, you can safely skip down
899 1) Struct scatterlist requirements.
901 You need to enable CONFIG_NEED_SG_DMA_LENGTH if the architecture
902 supports IOMMUs (including software IOMMU).
906 Architectures must ensure that kmalloc'ed buffer is
907 DMA-safe. Drivers and subsystems depend on it. If an architecture
908 isn't fully DMA-coherent (i.e. hardware doesn't ensure that data in
909 the CPU cache is identical to data in main memory),
910 ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN must be set so that the memory allocator
911 makes sure that kmalloc'ed buffer doesn't share a cache line with
912 the others. See arch/arm/include/asm/cache.h as an example.
914 Note that ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN is about DMA memory alignment
915 constraints. You don't need to worry about the architecture data
916 alignment constraints (e.g. the alignment constraints about 64-bit
922 This document, and the API itself, would not be in its current
923 form without the feedback and suggestions from numerous individuals.
924 We would like to specifically mention, in no particular order, the
927 Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>
928 Leo Dagum <dagum@barrel.engr.sgi.com>
929 Ralf Baechle <ralf@oss.sgi.com>
930 Grant Grundler <grundler@cup.hp.com>
931 Jay Estabrook <Jay.Estabrook@compaq.com>
932 Thomas Sailer <sailer@ife.ee.ethz.ch>
933 Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de>
934 Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
935 David Mosberger-Tang <davidm@hpl.hp.com>