1 Dynamic DMA mapping Guide
2 =========================
4 David S. Miller <davem@redhat.com>
5 Richard Henderson <rth@cygnus.com>
6 Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com>
8 This is a guide to device driver writers on how to use the DMA API
9 with example pseudo-code. For a concise description of the API, see
14 There are several kinds of addresses involved in the DMA API, and it's
15 important to understand the differences.
17 The kernel normally uses virtual addresses. Any address returned by
18 kmalloc(), vmalloc(), and similar interfaces is a virtual address and can
19 be stored in a "void *".
21 The virtual memory system (TLB, page tables, etc.) translates virtual
22 addresses to CPU physical addresses, which are stored as "phys_addr_t" or
23 "resource_size_t". The kernel manages device resources like registers as
24 physical addresses. These are the addresses in /proc/iomem. The physical
25 address is not directly useful to a driver; it must use ioremap() to map
26 the space and produce a virtual address.
28 I/O devices use a third kind of address: a "bus address" or "DMA address".
29 If a device has registers at an MMIO address, or if it performs DMA to read
30 or write system memory, the addresses used by the device are bus addresses.
31 In some systems, bus addresses are identical to CPU physical addresses, but
32 in general they are not. IOMMUs and host bridges can produce arbitrary
33 mappings between physical and bus addresses.
35 Here's a picture and some examples:
38 Virtual Physical Address
42 +-------+ +------+ +------+
43 | | |MMIO | Offset | |
44 | | Virtual |Space | applied | |
45 C +-------+ --------> B +------+ ----------> +------+ A
46 | | mapping | | by host | |
47 +-----+ | | | | bridge | | +--------+
48 | | | | +------+ | | | |
49 | CPU | | | | RAM | | | | Device |
51 +-----+ +-------+ +------+ +------+ +--------+
52 | | Virtual |Buffer| Mapping | |
53 X +-------+ --------> Y +------+ <---------- +------+ Z
54 | | mapping | RAM | by IOMMU
59 During the enumeration process, the kernel learns about I/O devices and
60 their MMIO space and the host bridges that connect them to the system. For
61 example, if a PCI device has a BAR, the kernel reads the bus address (A)
62 from the BAR and converts it to a CPU physical address (B). The address B
63 is stored in a struct resource and usually exposed via /proc/iomem. When a
64 driver claims a device, it typically uses ioremap() to map physical address
65 B at a virtual address (C). It can then use, e.g., ioread32(C), to access
66 the device registers at bus address A.
68 If the device supports DMA, the driver sets up a buffer using kmalloc() or
69 a similar interface, which returns a virtual address (X). The virtual
70 memory system maps X to a physical address (Y) in system RAM. The driver
71 can use virtual address X to access the buffer, but the device itself
72 cannot because DMA doesn't go through the CPU virtual memory system.
74 In some simple systems, the device can do DMA directly to physical address
75 Y. But in many others, there is IOMMU hardware that translates bus
76 addresses to physical addresses, e.g., it translates Z to Y. This is part
77 of the reason for the DMA API: the driver can give a virtual address X to
78 an interface like dma_map_single(), which sets up any required IOMMU
79 mapping and returns the bus address Z. The driver then tells the device to
80 do DMA to Z, and the IOMMU maps it to the buffer at address Y in system
83 So that Linux can use the dynamic DMA mapping, it needs some help from the
84 drivers, namely it has to take into account that DMA addresses should be
85 mapped only for the time they are actually used and unmapped after the DMA
88 The following API will work of course even on platforms where no such
91 Note that the DMA API works with any bus independent of the underlying
92 microprocessor architecture. You should use the DMA API rather than the
93 bus-specific DMA API, i.e., use the dma_map_*() interfaces rather than the
94 pci_map_*() interfaces.
96 First of all, you should make sure
98 #include <linux/dma-mapping.h>
100 is in your driver, which provides the definition of dma_addr_t. This type
101 can hold any valid DMA or bus address for the platform and should be used
102 everywhere you hold a DMA address returned from the DMA mapping functions.
104 What memory is DMA'able?
106 The first piece of information you must know is what kernel memory can
107 be used with the DMA mapping facilities. There has been an unwritten
108 set of rules regarding this, and this text is an attempt to finally
111 If you acquired your memory via the page allocator
112 (i.e. __get_free_page*()) or the generic memory allocators
113 (i.e. kmalloc() or kmem_cache_alloc()) then you may DMA to/from
114 that memory using the addresses returned from those routines.
116 This means specifically that you may _not_ use the memory/addresses
117 returned from vmalloc() for DMA. It is possible to DMA to the
118 _underlying_ memory mapped into a vmalloc() area, but this requires
119 walking page tables to get the physical addresses, and then
120 translating each of those pages back to a kernel address using
121 something like __va(). [ EDIT: Update this when we integrate
122 Gerd Knorr's generic code which does this. ]
124 This rule also means that you may use neither kernel image addresses
125 (items in data/text/bss segments), nor module image addresses, nor
126 stack addresses for DMA. These could all be mapped somewhere entirely
127 different than the rest of physical memory. Even if those classes of
128 memory could physically work with DMA, you'd need to ensure the I/O
129 buffers were cacheline-aligned. Without that, you'd see cacheline
130 sharing problems (data corruption) on CPUs with DMA-incoherent caches.
131 (The CPU could write to one word, DMA would write to a different one
132 in the same cache line, and one of them could be overwritten.)
134 Also, this means that you cannot take the return of a kmap()
135 call and DMA to/from that. This is similar to vmalloc().
137 What about block I/O and networking buffers? The block I/O and
138 networking subsystems make sure that the buffers they use are valid
139 for you to DMA from/to.
141 DMA addressing limitations
143 Does your device have any DMA addressing limitations? For example, is
144 your device only capable of driving the low order 24-bits of address?
145 If so, you need to inform the kernel of this fact.
147 By default, the kernel assumes that your device can address the full
148 32-bits. For a 64-bit capable device, this needs to be increased.
149 And for a device with limitations, as discussed in the previous
150 paragraph, it needs to be decreased.
152 Special note about PCI: PCI-X specification requires PCI-X devices to
153 support 64-bit addressing (DAC) for all transactions. And at least
154 one platform (SGI SN2) requires 64-bit consistent allocations to
155 operate correctly when the IO bus is in PCI-X mode.
157 For correct operation, you must interrogate the kernel in your device
158 probe routine to see if the DMA controller on the machine can properly
159 support the DMA addressing limitation your device has. It is good
160 style to do this even if your device holds the default setting,
161 because this shows that you did think about these issues wrt. your
164 The query 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 query the mask for both streaming and coherent APIs together.
169 If you have some special requirements, then the following two separate
170 queries can be used instead:
172 The query for streaming mappings is performed via a call to
175 int dma_set_mask(struct device *dev, u64 mask);
177 The query 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
183 is a bit mask describing which bits of an address your device
184 supports. It returns zero if your card can perform DMA properly on
185 the machine given the address mask you provided. In general, the
186 device struct of your device is embedded in the bus-specific device
187 struct of your device. For example, &pdev->dev is a pointer to the
188 device struct of a PCI device (pdev is a pointer to the PCI device
189 struct of your device).
191 If it returns non-zero, your device cannot perform DMA properly on
192 this platform, and attempting to do so will result in undefined
193 behavior. You must either use a different mask, or not use DMA.
195 This means that in the failure case, you have three options:
197 1) Use another DMA mask, if possible (see below).
198 2) Use some non-DMA mode for data transfer, if possible.
199 3) Ignore this device and do not initialize it.
201 It is recommended that your driver print a kernel KERN_WARNING message
202 when you end up performing either #2 or #3. In this manner, if a user
203 of your driver reports that performance is bad or that the device is not
204 even detected, you can ask them for the kernel messages to find out
207 The standard 32-bit addressing device would do something like this:
209 if (dma_set_mask_and_coherent(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(32))) {
210 dev_warn(dev, "mydev: No suitable DMA available\n");
211 goto ignore_this_device;
214 Another common scenario is a 64-bit capable device. The approach here
215 is to try for 64-bit addressing, but back down to a 32-bit mask that
216 should not fail. The kernel may fail the 64-bit mask not because the
217 platform is not capable of 64-bit addressing. Rather, it may fail in
218 this case simply because 32-bit addressing is done more efficiently
219 than 64-bit addressing. For example, Sparc64 PCI SAC addressing is
220 more efficient than DAC addressing.
222 Here is how you would handle a 64-bit capable device which can drive
223 all 64-bits when accessing streaming DMA:
227 if (!dma_set_mask(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(64))) {
229 } else if (!dma_set_mask(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(32))) {
232 dev_warn(dev, "mydev: No suitable DMA available\n");
233 goto ignore_this_device;
236 If a card is capable of using 64-bit consistent allocations as well,
237 the case would look like this:
239 int using_dac, consistent_using_dac;
241 if (!dma_set_mask_and_coherent(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(64))) {
243 consistent_using_dac = 1;
244 } else if (!dma_set_mask_and_coherent(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(32))) {
246 consistent_using_dac = 0;
248 dev_warn(dev, "mydev: No suitable DMA available\n");
249 goto ignore_this_device;
252 The coherent mask will always be able to set the same or a smaller mask as
253 the streaming mask. However for the rare case that a device driver only
254 uses consistent allocations, one would have to check the return value from
255 dma_set_coherent_mask().
257 Finally, if your device can only drive the low 24-bits of
258 address you might do something like:
260 if (dma_set_mask(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(24))) {
261 dev_warn(dev, "mydev: 24-bit DMA addressing not available\n");
262 goto ignore_this_device;
265 When dma_set_mask() or dma_set_mask_and_coherent() is successful, and
266 returns zero, the kernel saves away this mask you have provided. The
267 kernel will use this information later when you make DMA mappings.
269 There is a case which we are aware of at this time, which is worth
270 mentioning in this documentation. If your device supports multiple
271 functions (for example a sound card provides playback and record
272 functions) and the various different functions have _different_
273 DMA addressing limitations, you may wish to probe each mask and
274 only provide the functionality which the machine can handle. It
275 is important that the last call to dma_set_mask() be for the
278 Here is pseudo-code showing how this might be done:
280 #define PLAYBACK_ADDRESS_BITS DMA_BIT_MASK(32)
281 #define RECORD_ADDRESS_BITS DMA_BIT_MASK(24)
283 struct my_sound_card *card;
287 if (!dma_set_mask(dev, PLAYBACK_ADDRESS_BITS)) {
288 card->playback_enabled = 1;
290 card->playback_enabled = 0;
291 dev_warn(dev, "%s: Playback disabled due to DMA limitations\n",
294 if (!dma_set_mask(dev, RECORD_ADDRESS_BITS)) {
295 card->record_enabled = 1;
297 card->record_enabled = 0;
298 dev_warn(dev, "%s: Record disabled due to DMA limitations\n",
302 A sound card was used as an example here because this genre of PCI
303 devices seems to be littered with ISA chips given a PCI front end,
304 and thus retaining the 16MB DMA addressing limitations of ISA.
306 Types of DMA mappings
308 There are two types of DMA mappings:
310 - Consistent DMA mappings which are usually mapped at driver
311 initialization, unmapped at the end and for which the hardware should
312 guarantee that the device and the CPU can access the data
313 in parallel and will see updates made by each other without any
314 explicit software flushing.
316 Think of "consistent" as "synchronous" or "coherent".
318 The current default is to return consistent memory in the low 32
319 bits of the bus space. However, for future compatibility you should
320 set the consistent mask even if this default is fine for your
323 Good examples of what to use consistent mappings for are:
325 - Network card DMA ring descriptors.
326 - SCSI adapter mailbox command data structures.
327 - Device firmware microcode executed out of
330 The invariant these examples all require is that any CPU store
331 to memory is immediately visible to the device, and vice
332 versa. Consistent mappings guarantee this.
334 IMPORTANT: Consistent DMA memory does not preclude the usage of
335 proper memory barriers. The CPU may reorder stores to
336 consistent memory just as it may normal memory. Example:
337 if it is important for the device to see the first word
338 of a descriptor updated before the second, you must do
341 desc->word0 = address;
343 desc->word1 = DESC_VALID;
345 in order to get correct behavior on all platforms.
347 Also, on some platforms your driver may need to flush CPU write
348 buffers in much the same way as it needs to flush write buffers
349 found in PCI bridges (such as by reading a register's value
352 - Streaming DMA mappings which are usually mapped for one DMA
353 transfer, unmapped right after it (unless you use dma_sync_* below)
354 and for which hardware can optimize for sequential accesses.
356 This of "streaming" as "asynchronous" or "outside the coherency
359 Good examples of what to use streaming mappings for are:
361 - Networking buffers transmitted/received by a device.
362 - Filesystem buffers written/read by a SCSI device.
364 The interfaces for using this type of mapping were designed in
365 such a way that an implementation can make whatever performance
366 optimizations the hardware allows. To this end, when using
367 such mappings you must be explicit about what you want to happen.
369 Neither type of DMA mapping has alignment restrictions that come from
370 the underlying bus, although some devices may have such restrictions.
371 Also, systems with caches that aren't DMA-coherent will work better
372 when the underlying buffers don't share cache lines with other data.
375 Using Consistent DMA mappings.
377 To allocate and map large (PAGE_SIZE or so) consistent DMA regions,
380 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
382 cpu_addr = dma_alloc_coherent(dev, size, &dma_handle, gfp);
384 where device is a struct device *. This may be called in interrupt
385 context with the GFP_ATOMIC flag.
387 Size is the length of the region you want to allocate, in bytes.
389 This routine will allocate RAM for that region, so it acts similarly to
390 __get_free_pages() (but takes size instead of a page order). If your
391 driver needs regions sized smaller than a page, you may prefer using
392 the dma_pool interface, described below.
394 The consistent DMA mapping interfaces, for non-NULL dev, will by
395 default return a DMA address which is 32-bit addressable. Even if the
396 device indicates (via DMA mask) that it may address the upper 32-bits,
397 consistent allocation will only return > 32-bit addresses for DMA if
398 the consistent DMA mask has been explicitly changed via
399 dma_set_coherent_mask(). This is true of the dma_pool interface as
402 dma_alloc_coherent() returns two values: the virtual address which you
403 can use to access it from the CPU and dma_handle which you pass to the
406 The CPU virtual address and the DMA bus address are both
407 guaranteed to be aligned to the smallest PAGE_SIZE order which
408 is greater than or equal to the requested size. This invariant
409 exists (for example) to guarantee that if you allocate a chunk
410 which is smaller than or equal to 64 kilobytes, the extent of the
411 buffer you receive will not cross a 64K boundary.
413 To unmap and free such a DMA region, you call:
415 dma_free_coherent(dev, size, cpu_addr, dma_handle);
417 where dev, size are the same as in the above call and cpu_addr and
418 dma_handle are the values dma_alloc_coherent() returned to you.
419 This function may not be called in interrupt context.
421 If your driver needs lots of smaller memory regions, you can write
422 custom code to subdivide pages returned by dma_alloc_coherent(),
423 or you can use the dma_pool API to do that. A dma_pool is like
424 a kmem_cache, but it uses dma_alloc_coherent(), not __get_free_pages().
425 Also, it understands common hardware constraints for alignment,
426 like queue heads needing to be aligned on N byte boundaries.
428 Create a dma_pool like this:
430 struct dma_pool *pool;
432 pool = dma_pool_create(name, dev, size, align, boundary);
434 The "name" is for diagnostics (like a kmem_cache name); dev and size
435 are as above. The device's hardware alignment requirement for this
436 type of data is "align" (which is expressed in bytes, and must be a
437 power of two). If your device has no boundary crossing restrictions,
438 pass 0 for boundary; passing 4096 says memory allocated from this pool
439 must not cross 4KByte boundaries (but at that time it may be better to
440 use dma_alloc_coherent() directly instead).
442 Allocate memory from a DMA pool like this:
444 cpu_addr = dma_pool_alloc(pool, flags, &dma_handle);
446 flags are GFP_KERNEL if blocking is permitted (not in_interrupt nor
447 holding SMP locks), GFP_ATOMIC otherwise. Like dma_alloc_coherent(),
448 this returns two values, cpu_addr and dma_handle.
450 Free memory that was allocated from a dma_pool like this:
452 dma_pool_free(pool, cpu_addr, dma_handle);
454 where pool is what you passed to dma_pool_alloc(), and cpu_addr and
455 dma_handle are the values dma_pool_alloc() returned. This function
456 may be called in interrupt context.
458 Destroy a dma_pool by calling:
460 dma_pool_destroy(pool);
462 Make sure you've called dma_pool_free() for all memory allocated
463 from a pool before you destroy the pool. This function may not
464 be called in interrupt context.
468 The interfaces described in subsequent portions of this document
469 take a DMA direction argument, which is an integer and takes on
470 one of the following values:
477 You should provide the exact DMA direction if you know it.
479 DMA_TO_DEVICE means "from main memory to the device"
480 DMA_FROM_DEVICE means "from the device to main memory"
481 It is the direction in which the data moves during the DMA
484 You are _strongly_ encouraged to specify this as precisely
487 If you absolutely cannot know the direction of the DMA transfer,
488 specify DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL. It means that the DMA can go in
489 either direction. The platform guarantees that you may legally
490 specify this, and that it will work, but this may be at the
491 cost of performance for example.
493 The value DMA_NONE is to be used for debugging. One can
494 hold this in a data structure before you come to know the
495 precise direction, and this will help catch cases where your
496 direction tracking logic has failed to set things up properly.
498 Another advantage of specifying this value precisely (outside of
499 potential platform-specific optimizations of such) is for debugging.
500 Some platforms actually have a write permission boolean which DMA
501 mappings can be marked with, much like page protections in the user
502 program address space. Such platforms can and do report errors in the
503 kernel logs when the DMA controller hardware detects violation of the
506 Only streaming mappings specify a direction, consistent mappings
507 implicitly have a direction attribute setting of
510 The SCSI subsystem tells you the direction to use in the
511 'sc_data_direction' member of the SCSI command your driver is
514 For Networking drivers, it's a rather simple affair. For transmit
515 packets, map/unmap them with the DMA_TO_DEVICE direction
516 specifier. For receive packets, just the opposite, map/unmap them
517 with the DMA_FROM_DEVICE direction specifier.
519 Using Streaming DMA mappings
521 The streaming DMA mapping routines can be called from interrupt
522 context. There are two versions of each map/unmap, one which will
523 map/unmap a single memory region, and one which will map/unmap a
526 To map a single region, you do:
528 struct device *dev = &my_dev->dev;
529 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
530 void *addr = buffer->ptr;
531 size_t size = buffer->len;
533 dma_handle = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
534 if (dma_mapping_error(dma_handle)) {
536 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
537 * delay and try again later or
540 goto map_error_handling;
545 dma_unmap_single(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
547 You should call dma_mapping_error() as dma_map_single() could fail and return
548 error. Not all DMA implementations support the dma_mapping_error() interface.
549 However, it is a good practice to call dma_mapping_error() interface, which
550 will invoke the generic mapping error check interface. Doing so will ensure
551 that the mapping code will work correctly on all DMA implementations without
552 any dependency on the specifics of the underlying implementation. Using the
553 returned address without checking for errors could result in failures ranging
554 from panics to silent data corruption. A couple of examples of incorrect ways
555 to check for errors that make assumptions about the underlying DMA
556 implementation are as follows and these are applicable to dma_map_page() as
560 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
562 dma_handle = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
563 if ((dma_handle & 0xffff != 0) || (dma_handle >= 0x1000000)) {
568 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
570 dma_handle = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
571 if (dma_handle == DMA_ERROR_CODE) {
575 You should call dma_unmap_single() when the DMA activity is finished, e.g.,
576 from the interrupt which told you that the DMA transfer is done.
578 Using CPU pointers like this for single mappings has a disadvantage:
579 you cannot reference HIGHMEM memory in this way. Thus, there is a
580 map/unmap interface pair akin to dma_{map,unmap}_single(). These
581 interfaces deal with page/offset pairs instead of CPU pointers.
584 struct device *dev = &my_dev->dev;
585 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
586 struct page *page = buffer->page;
587 unsigned long offset = buffer->offset;
588 size_t size = buffer->len;
590 dma_handle = dma_map_page(dev, page, offset, size, direction);
591 if (dma_mapping_error(dma_handle)) {
593 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
594 * delay and try again later or
597 goto map_error_handling;
602 dma_unmap_page(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
604 Here, "offset" means byte offset within the given page.
606 You should call dma_mapping_error() as dma_map_page() could fail and return
607 error as outlined under the dma_map_single() discussion.
609 You should call dma_unmap_page() when the DMA activity is finished, e.g.,
610 from the interrupt which told you that the DMA transfer is done.
612 With scatterlists, you map a region gathered from several regions by:
614 int i, count = dma_map_sg(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
615 struct scatterlist *sg;
617 for_each_sg(sglist, sg, count, i) {
618 hw_address[i] = sg_dma_address(sg);
619 hw_len[i] = sg_dma_len(sg);
622 where nents is the number of entries in the sglist.
624 The implementation is free to merge several consecutive sglist entries
625 into one (e.g. if DMA mapping is done with PAGE_SIZE granularity, any
626 consecutive sglist entries can be merged into one provided the first one
627 ends and the second one starts on a page boundary - in fact this is a huge
628 advantage for cards which either cannot do scatter-gather or have very
629 limited number of scatter-gather entries) and returns the actual number
630 of sg entries it mapped them to. On failure 0 is returned.
632 Then you should loop count times (note: this can be less than nents times)
633 and use sg_dma_address() and sg_dma_len() macros where you previously
634 accessed sg->address and sg->length as shown above.
636 To unmap a scatterlist, just call:
638 dma_unmap_sg(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
640 Again, make sure DMA activity has already finished.
642 PLEASE NOTE: The 'nents' argument to the dma_unmap_sg call must be
643 the _same_ one you passed into the dma_map_sg call,
644 it should _NOT_ be the 'count' value _returned_ from the
647 Every dma_map_{single,sg}() call should have its dma_unmap_{single,sg}()
648 counterpart, because the bus address space is a shared resource and
649 you could render the machine unusable by consuming all bus addresses.
651 If you need to use the same streaming DMA region multiple times and touch
652 the data in between the DMA transfers, the buffer needs to be synced
653 properly in order for the CPU and device to see the most up-to-date and
654 correct copy of the DMA buffer.
656 So, firstly, just map it with dma_map_{single,sg}(), and after each DMA
657 transfer call either:
659 dma_sync_single_for_cpu(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
663 dma_sync_sg_for_cpu(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
667 Then, if you wish to let the device get at the DMA area again,
668 finish accessing the data with the CPU, and then before actually
669 giving the buffer to the hardware call either:
671 dma_sync_single_for_device(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
675 dma_sync_sg_for_device(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
679 After the last DMA transfer call one of the DMA unmap routines
680 dma_unmap_{single,sg}(). If you don't touch the data from the first
681 dma_map_*() call till dma_unmap_*(), then you don't have to call the
682 dma_sync_*() routines at all.
684 Here is pseudo code which shows a situation in which you would need
685 to use the dma_sync_*() interfaces.
687 my_card_setup_receive_buffer(struct my_card *cp, char *buffer, int len)
691 mapping = dma_map_single(cp->dev, buffer, len, DMA_FROM_DEVICE);
692 if (dma_mapping_error(dma_handle)) {
694 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
695 * delay and try again later or
698 goto map_error_handling;
703 cp->rx_dma = mapping;
705 give_rx_buf_to_card(cp);
710 my_card_interrupt_handler(int irq, void *devid, struct pt_regs *regs)
712 struct my_card *cp = devid;
715 if (read_card_status(cp) == RX_BUF_TRANSFERRED) {
716 struct my_card_header *hp;
718 /* Examine the header to see if we wish
719 * to accept the data. But synchronize
720 * the DMA transfer with the CPU first
721 * so that we see updated contents.
723 dma_sync_single_for_cpu(&cp->dev, cp->rx_dma,
727 /* Now it is safe to examine the buffer. */
728 hp = (struct my_card_header *) cp->rx_buf;
729 if (header_is_ok(hp)) {
730 dma_unmap_single(&cp->dev, cp->rx_dma, cp->rx_len,
732 pass_to_upper_layers(cp->rx_buf);
733 make_and_setup_new_rx_buf(cp);
735 /* CPU should not write to
736 * DMA_FROM_DEVICE-mapped area,
737 * so dma_sync_single_for_device() is
738 * not needed here. It would be required
739 * for DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL mapping if
740 * the memory was modified.
742 give_rx_buf_to_card(cp);
747 Drivers converted fully to this interface should not use virt_to_bus() any
748 longer, nor should they use bus_to_virt(). Some drivers have to be changed a
749 little bit, because there is no longer an equivalent to bus_to_virt() in the
750 dynamic DMA mapping scheme - you have to always store the DMA addresses
751 returned by the dma_alloc_coherent(), dma_pool_alloc(), and dma_map_single()
752 calls (dma_map_sg() stores them in the scatterlist itself if the platform
753 supports dynamic DMA mapping in hardware) in your driver structures and/or
754 in the card registers.
756 All drivers should be using these interfaces with no exceptions. It
757 is planned to completely remove virt_to_bus() and bus_to_virt() as
758 they are entirely deprecated. Some ports already do not provide these
759 as it is impossible to correctly support them.
763 DMA address space is limited on some architectures and an allocation
764 failure can be determined by:
766 - checking if dma_alloc_coherent() returns NULL or dma_map_sg returns 0
768 - checking the dma_addr_t returned from dma_map_single() and dma_map_page()
769 by using dma_mapping_error():
771 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
773 dma_handle = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
774 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle)) {
776 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
777 * delay and try again later or
780 goto map_error_handling;
783 - unmap pages that are already mapped, when mapping error occurs in the middle
784 of a multiple page mapping attempt. These example are applicable to
785 dma_map_page() as well.
788 dma_addr_t dma_handle1;
789 dma_addr_t dma_handle2;
791 dma_handle1 = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
792 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle1)) {
794 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
795 * delay and try again later or
798 goto map_error_handling1;
800 dma_handle2 = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
801 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle2)) {
803 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
804 * delay and try again later or
807 goto map_error_handling2;
813 dma_unmap_single(dma_handle1);
816 Example 2: (if buffers are allocated in a loop, unmap all mapped buffers when
817 mapping error is detected in the middle)
820 dma_addr_t array[DMA_BUFFERS];
823 for (i = 0; i < DMA_BUFFERS; i++) {
827 dma_addr = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
828 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_addr)) {
830 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
831 * delay and try again later or
834 goto map_error_handling;
836 array[i].dma_addr = dma_addr;
844 for (i = 0; i < save_index; i++) {
848 dma_unmap_single(array[i].dma_addr);
851 Networking drivers must call dev_kfree_skb() to free the socket buffer
852 and return NETDEV_TX_OK if the DMA mapping fails on the transmit hook
853 (ndo_start_xmit). This means that the socket buffer is just dropped in
856 SCSI drivers must return SCSI_MLQUEUE_HOST_BUSY if the DMA mapping
857 fails in the queuecommand hook. This means that the SCSI subsystem
858 passes the command to the driver again later.
860 Optimizing Unmap State Space Consumption
862 On many platforms, dma_unmap_{single,page}() is simply a nop.
863 Therefore, keeping track of the mapping address and length is a waste
864 of space. Instead of filling your drivers up with ifdefs and the like
865 to "work around" this (which would defeat the whole purpose of a
866 portable API) the following facilities are provided.
868 Actually, instead of describing the macros one by one, we'll
869 transform some example code.
871 1) Use DEFINE_DMA_UNMAP_{ADDR,LEN} in state saving structures.
884 DEFINE_DMA_UNMAP_ADDR(mapping);
885 DEFINE_DMA_UNMAP_LEN(len);
888 2) Use dma_unmap_{addr,len}_set() to set these values.
891 ringp->mapping = FOO;
896 dma_unmap_addr_set(ringp, mapping, FOO);
897 dma_unmap_len_set(ringp, len, BAR);
899 3) Use dma_unmap_{addr,len}() to access these values.
902 dma_unmap_single(dev, ringp->mapping, ringp->len,
907 dma_unmap_single(dev,
908 dma_unmap_addr(ringp, mapping),
909 dma_unmap_len(ringp, len),
912 It really should be self-explanatory. We treat the ADDR and LEN
913 separately, because it is possible for an implementation to only
914 need the address in order to perform the unmap operation.
918 If you are just writing drivers for Linux and do not maintain
919 an architecture port for the kernel, you can safely skip down
922 1) Struct scatterlist requirements.
924 Don't invent the architecture specific struct scatterlist; just use
925 <asm-generic/scatterlist.h>. You need to enable
926 CONFIG_NEED_SG_DMA_LENGTH if the architecture supports IOMMUs
927 (including software IOMMU).
931 Architectures must ensure that kmalloc'ed buffer is
932 DMA-safe. Drivers and subsystems depend on it. If an architecture
933 isn't fully DMA-coherent (i.e. hardware doesn't ensure that data in
934 the CPU cache is identical to data in main memory),
935 ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN must be set so that the memory allocator
936 makes sure that kmalloc'ed buffer doesn't share a cache line with
937 the others. See arch/arm/include/asm/cache.h as an example.
939 Note that ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN is about DMA memory alignment
940 constraints. You don't need to worry about the architecture data
941 alignment constraints (e.g. the alignment constraints about 64-bit
944 3) Supporting multiple types of IOMMUs
946 If your architecture needs to support multiple types of IOMMUs, you
947 can use include/linux/asm-generic/dma-mapping-common.h. It's a
948 library to support the DMA API with multiple types of IOMMUs. Lots
949 of architectures (x86, powerpc, sh, alpha, ia64, microblaze and
950 sparc) use it. Choose one to see how it can be used. If you need to
951 support multiple types of IOMMUs in a single system, the example of
952 x86 or powerpc helps.
956 This document, and the API itself, would not be in its current
957 form without the feedback and suggestions from numerous individuals.
958 We would like to specifically mention, in no particular order, the
961 Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>
962 Leo Dagum <dagum@barrel.engr.sgi.com>
963 Ralf Baechle <ralf@oss.sgi.com>
964 Grant Grundler <grundler@cup.hp.com>
965 Jay Estabrook <Jay.Estabrook@compaq.com>
966 Thomas Sailer <sailer@ife.ee.ethz.ch>
967 Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de>
968 Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
969 David Mosberger-Tang <davidm@hpl.hp.com>