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". If a device has
29 registers at an MMIO address, or if it performs DMA to read or write system
30 memory, the addresses used by the device are bus addresses. In some
31 systems, bus addresses are identical to CPU physical addresses, but in
32 general they are not. IOMMUs and host bridges can produce arbitrary
33 mappings between physical and bus addresses.
35 From a device's point of view, DMA uses the bus address space, but it may
36 be restricted to a subset of that space. For example, even if a system
37 supports 64-bit addresses for main memory and PCI BARs, it may use an IOMMU
38 so devices only need to use 32-bit DMA addresses.
40 Here's a picture and some examples:
43 Virtual Physical Address
47 +-------+ +------+ +------+
48 | | |MMIO | Offset | |
49 | | Virtual |Space | applied | |
50 C +-------+ --------> B +------+ ----------> +------+ A
51 | | mapping | | by host | |
52 +-----+ | | | | bridge | | +--------+
53 | | | | +------+ | | | |
54 | CPU | | | | RAM | | | | Device |
56 +-----+ +-------+ +------+ +------+ +--------+
57 | | Virtual |Buffer| Mapping | |
58 X +-------+ --------> Y +------+ <---------- +------+ Z
59 | | mapping | RAM | by IOMMU
64 During the enumeration process, the kernel learns about I/O devices and
65 their MMIO space and the host bridges that connect them to the system. For
66 example, if a PCI device has a BAR, the kernel reads the bus address (A)
67 from the BAR and converts it to a CPU physical address (B). The address B
68 is stored in a struct resource and usually exposed via /proc/iomem. When a
69 driver claims a device, it typically uses ioremap() to map physical address
70 B at a virtual address (C). It can then use, e.g., ioread32(C), to access
71 the device registers at bus address A.
73 If the device supports DMA, the driver sets up a buffer using kmalloc() or
74 a similar interface, which returns a virtual address (X). The virtual
75 memory system maps X to a physical address (Y) in system RAM. The driver
76 can use virtual address X to access the buffer, but the device itself
77 cannot because DMA doesn't go through the CPU virtual memory system.
79 In some simple systems, the device can do DMA directly to physical address
80 Y. But in many others, there is IOMMU hardware that translates DMA
81 addresses to physical addresses, e.g., it translates Z to Y. This is part
82 of the reason for the DMA API: the driver can give a virtual address X to
83 an interface like dma_map_single(), which sets up any required IOMMU
84 mapping and returns the DMA address Z. The driver then tells the device to
85 do DMA to Z, and the IOMMU maps it to the buffer at address Y in system
88 So that Linux can use the dynamic DMA mapping, it needs some help from the
89 drivers, namely it has to take into account that DMA addresses should be
90 mapped only for the time they are actually used and unmapped after the DMA
93 The following API will work of course even on platforms where no such
96 Note that the DMA API works with any bus independent of the underlying
97 microprocessor architecture. You should use the DMA API rather than the
98 bus-specific DMA API, i.e., use the dma_map_*() interfaces rather than the
99 pci_map_*() interfaces.
101 First of all, you should make sure
103 #include <linux/dma-mapping.h>
105 is in your driver, which provides the definition of dma_addr_t. This type
106 can hold any valid DMA address for the platform and should be used
107 everywhere you hold a DMA address returned from the DMA mapping functions.
109 What memory is DMA'able?
111 The first piece of information you must know is what kernel memory can
112 be used with the DMA mapping facilities. There has been an unwritten
113 set of rules regarding this, and this text is an attempt to finally
116 If you acquired your memory via the page allocator
117 (i.e. __get_free_page*()) or the generic memory allocators
118 (i.e. kmalloc() or kmem_cache_alloc()) then you may DMA to/from
119 that memory using the addresses returned from those routines.
121 This means specifically that you may _not_ use the memory/addresses
122 returned from vmalloc() for DMA. It is possible to DMA to the
123 _underlying_ memory mapped into a vmalloc() area, but this requires
124 walking page tables to get the physical addresses, and then
125 translating each of those pages back to a kernel address using
126 something like __va(). [ EDIT: Update this when we integrate
127 Gerd Knorr's generic code which does this. ]
129 This rule also means that you may use neither kernel image addresses
130 (items in data/text/bss segments), nor module image addresses, nor
131 stack addresses for DMA. These could all be mapped somewhere entirely
132 different than the rest of physical memory. Even if those classes of
133 memory could physically work with DMA, you'd need to ensure the I/O
134 buffers were cacheline-aligned. Without that, you'd see cacheline
135 sharing problems (data corruption) on CPUs with DMA-incoherent caches.
136 (The CPU could write to one word, DMA would write to a different one
137 in the same cache line, and one of them could be overwritten.)
139 Also, this means that you cannot take the return of a kmap()
140 call and DMA to/from that. This is similar to vmalloc().
142 What about block I/O and networking buffers? The block I/O and
143 networking subsystems make sure that the buffers they use are valid
144 for you to DMA from/to.
146 DMA addressing limitations
148 Does your device have any DMA addressing limitations? For example, is
149 your device only capable of driving the low order 24-bits of address?
150 If so, you need to inform the kernel of this fact.
152 By default, the kernel assumes that your device can address the full
153 32-bits. For a 64-bit capable device, this needs to be increased.
154 And for a device with limitations, as discussed in the previous
155 paragraph, it needs to be decreased.
157 Special note about PCI: PCI-X specification requires PCI-X devices to
158 support 64-bit addressing (DAC) for all transactions. And at least
159 one platform (SGI SN2) requires 64-bit consistent allocations to
160 operate correctly when the IO bus is in PCI-X mode.
162 For correct operation, you must interrogate the kernel in your device
163 probe routine to see if the DMA controller on the machine can properly
164 support the DMA addressing limitation your device has. It is good
165 style to do this even if your device holds the default setting,
166 because this shows that you did think about these issues wrt. your
169 The query is performed via a call to dma_set_mask_and_coherent():
171 int dma_set_mask_and_coherent(struct device *dev, u64 mask);
173 which will query the mask for both streaming and coherent APIs together.
174 If you have some special requirements, then the following two separate
175 queries can be used instead:
177 The query for streaming mappings is performed via a call to
180 int dma_set_mask(struct device *dev, u64 mask);
182 The query for consistent allocations is performed via a call
183 to dma_set_coherent_mask():
185 int dma_set_coherent_mask(struct device *dev, u64 mask);
187 Here, dev is a pointer to the device struct of your device, and mask
188 is a bit mask describing which bits of an address your device
189 supports. It returns zero if your card can perform DMA properly on
190 the machine given the address mask you provided. In general, the
191 device struct of your device is embedded in the bus-specific device
192 struct of your device. For example, &pdev->dev is a pointer to the
193 device struct of a PCI device (pdev is a pointer to the PCI device
194 struct of your device).
196 If it returns non-zero, your device cannot perform DMA properly on
197 this platform, and attempting to do so will result in undefined
198 behavior. You must either use a different mask, or not use DMA.
200 This means that in the failure case, you have three options:
202 1) Use another DMA mask, if possible (see below).
203 2) Use some non-DMA mode for data transfer, if possible.
204 3) Ignore this device and do not initialize it.
206 It is recommended that your driver print a kernel KERN_WARNING message
207 when you end up performing either #2 or #3. In this manner, if a user
208 of your driver reports that performance is bad or that the device is not
209 even detected, you can ask them for the kernel messages to find out
212 The standard 32-bit addressing device would do something like this:
214 if (dma_set_mask_and_coherent(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(32))) {
215 dev_warn(dev, "mydev: No suitable DMA available\n");
216 goto ignore_this_device;
219 Another common scenario is a 64-bit capable device. The approach here
220 is to try for 64-bit addressing, but back down to a 32-bit mask that
221 should not fail. The kernel may fail the 64-bit mask not because the
222 platform is not capable of 64-bit addressing. Rather, it may fail in
223 this case simply because 32-bit addressing is done more efficiently
224 than 64-bit addressing. For example, Sparc64 PCI SAC addressing is
225 more efficient than DAC addressing.
227 Here is how you would handle a 64-bit capable device which can drive
228 all 64-bits when accessing streaming DMA:
232 if (!dma_set_mask(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(64))) {
234 } else if (!dma_set_mask(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(32))) {
237 dev_warn(dev, "mydev: No suitable DMA available\n");
238 goto ignore_this_device;
241 If a card is capable of using 64-bit consistent allocations as well,
242 the case would look like this:
244 int using_dac, consistent_using_dac;
246 if (!dma_set_mask_and_coherent(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(64))) {
248 consistent_using_dac = 1;
249 } else if (!dma_set_mask_and_coherent(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(32))) {
251 consistent_using_dac = 0;
253 dev_warn(dev, "mydev: No suitable DMA available\n");
254 goto ignore_this_device;
257 The coherent mask will always be able to set the same or a smaller mask as
258 the streaming mask. However for the rare case that a device driver only
259 uses consistent allocations, one would have to check the return value from
260 dma_set_coherent_mask().
262 Finally, if your device can only drive the low 24-bits of
263 address you might do something like:
265 if (dma_set_mask(dev, DMA_BIT_MASK(24))) {
266 dev_warn(dev, "mydev: 24-bit DMA addressing not available\n");
267 goto ignore_this_device;
270 When dma_set_mask() or dma_set_mask_and_coherent() is successful, and
271 returns zero, the kernel saves away this mask you have provided. The
272 kernel will use this information later when you make DMA mappings.
274 There is a case which we are aware of at this time, which is worth
275 mentioning in this documentation. If your device supports multiple
276 functions (for example a sound card provides playback and record
277 functions) and the various different functions have _different_
278 DMA addressing limitations, you may wish to probe each mask and
279 only provide the functionality which the machine can handle. It
280 is important that the last call to dma_set_mask() be for the
283 Here is pseudo-code showing how this might be done:
285 #define PLAYBACK_ADDRESS_BITS DMA_BIT_MASK(32)
286 #define RECORD_ADDRESS_BITS DMA_BIT_MASK(24)
288 struct my_sound_card *card;
292 if (!dma_set_mask(dev, PLAYBACK_ADDRESS_BITS)) {
293 card->playback_enabled = 1;
295 card->playback_enabled = 0;
296 dev_warn(dev, "%s: Playback disabled due to DMA limitations\n",
299 if (!dma_set_mask(dev, RECORD_ADDRESS_BITS)) {
300 card->record_enabled = 1;
302 card->record_enabled = 0;
303 dev_warn(dev, "%s: Record disabled due to DMA limitations\n",
307 A sound card was used as an example here because this genre of PCI
308 devices seems to be littered with ISA chips given a PCI front end,
309 and thus retaining the 16MB DMA addressing limitations of ISA.
311 Types of DMA mappings
313 There are two types of DMA mappings:
315 - Consistent DMA mappings which are usually mapped at driver
316 initialization, unmapped at the end and for which the hardware should
317 guarantee that the device and the CPU can access the data
318 in parallel and will see updates made by each other without any
319 explicit software flushing.
321 Think of "consistent" as "synchronous" or "coherent".
323 The current default is to return consistent memory in the low 32
324 bits of the DMA space. However, for future compatibility you should
325 set the consistent mask even if this default is fine for your
328 Good examples of what to use consistent mappings for are:
330 - Network card DMA ring descriptors.
331 - SCSI adapter mailbox command data structures.
332 - Device firmware microcode executed out of
335 The invariant these examples all require is that any CPU store
336 to memory is immediately visible to the device, and vice
337 versa. Consistent mappings guarantee this.
339 IMPORTANT: Consistent DMA memory does not preclude the usage of
340 proper memory barriers. The CPU may reorder stores to
341 consistent memory just as it may normal memory. Example:
342 if it is important for the device to see the first word
343 of a descriptor updated before the second, you must do
346 desc->word0 = address;
348 desc->word1 = DESC_VALID;
350 in order to get correct behavior on all platforms.
352 Also, on some platforms your driver may need to flush CPU write
353 buffers in much the same way as it needs to flush write buffers
354 found in PCI bridges (such as by reading a register's value
357 - Streaming DMA mappings which are usually mapped for one DMA
358 transfer, unmapped right after it (unless you use dma_sync_* below)
359 and for which hardware can optimize for sequential accesses.
361 Think of "streaming" as "asynchronous" or "outside the coherency
364 Good examples of what to use streaming mappings for are:
366 - Networking buffers transmitted/received by a device.
367 - Filesystem buffers written/read by a SCSI device.
369 The interfaces for using this type of mapping were designed in
370 such a way that an implementation can make whatever performance
371 optimizations the hardware allows. To this end, when using
372 such mappings you must be explicit about what you want to happen.
374 Neither type of DMA mapping has alignment restrictions that come from
375 the underlying bus, although some devices may have such restrictions.
376 Also, systems with caches that aren't DMA-coherent will work better
377 when the underlying buffers don't share cache lines with other data.
380 Using Consistent DMA mappings.
382 To allocate and map large (PAGE_SIZE or so) consistent DMA regions,
385 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
387 cpu_addr = dma_alloc_coherent(dev, size, &dma_handle, gfp);
389 where device is a struct device *. This may be called in interrupt
390 context with the GFP_ATOMIC flag.
392 Size is the length of the region you want to allocate, in bytes.
394 This routine will allocate RAM for that region, so it acts similarly to
395 __get_free_pages() (but takes size instead of a page order). If your
396 driver needs regions sized smaller than a page, you may prefer using
397 the dma_pool interface, described below.
399 The consistent DMA mapping interfaces, for non-NULL dev, will by
400 default return a DMA address which is 32-bit addressable. Even if the
401 device indicates (via DMA mask) that it may address the upper 32-bits,
402 consistent allocation will only return > 32-bit addresses for DMA if
403 the consistent DMA mask has been explicitly changed via
404 dma_set_coherent_mask(). This is true of the dma_pool interface as
407 dma_alloc_coherent() returns two values: the virtual address which you
408 can use to access it from the CPU and dma_handle which you pass to the
411 The CPU virtual address and the DMA address are both
412 guaranteed to be aligned to the smallest PAGE_SIZE order which
413 is greater than or equal to the requested size. This invariant
414 exists (for example) to guarantee that if you allocate a chunk
415 which is smaller than or equal to 64 kilobytes, the extent of the
416 buffer you receive will not cross a 64K boundary.
418 To unmap and free such a DMA region, you call:
420 dma_free_coherent(dev, size, cpu_addr, dma_handle);
422 where dev, size are the same as in the above call and cpu_addr and
423 dma_handle are the values dma_alloc_coherent() returned to you.
424 This function may not be called in interrupt context.
426 If your driver needs lots of smaller memory regions, you can write
427 custom code to subdivide pages returned by dma_alloc_coherent(),
428 or you can use the dma_pool API to do that. A dma_pool is like
429 a kmem_cache, but it uses dma_alloc_coherent(), not __get_free_pages().
430 Also, it understands common hardware constraints for alignment,
431 like queue heads needing to be aligned on N byte boundaries.
433 Create a dma_pool like this:
435 struct dma_pool *pool;
437 pool = dma_pool_create(name, dev, size, align, boundary);
439 The "name" is for diagnostics (like a kmem_cache name); dev and size
440 are as above. The device's hardware alignment requirement for this
441 type of data is "align" (which is expressed in bytes, and must be a
442 power of two). If your device has no boundary crossing restrictions,
443 pass 0 for boundary; passing 4096 says memory allocated from this pool
444 must not cross 4KByte boundaries (but at that time it may be better to
445 use dma_alloc_coherent() directly instead).
447 Allocate memory from a DMA pool like this:
449 cpu_addr = dma_pool_alloc(pool, flags, &dma_handle);
451 flags are GFP_KERNEL if blocking is permitted (not in_interrupt nor
452 holding SMP locks), GFP_ATOMIC otherwise. Like dma_alloc_coherent(),
453 this returns two values, cpu_addr and dma_handle.
455 Free memory that was allocated from a dma_pool like this:
457 dma_pool_free(pool, cpu_addr, dma_handle);
459 where pool is what you passed to dma_pool_alloc(), and cpu_addr and
460 dma_handle are the values dma_pool_alloc() returned. This function
461 may be called in interrupt context.
463 Destroy a dma_pool by calling:
465 dma_pool_destroy(pool);
467 Make sure you've called dma_pool_free() for all memory allocated
468 from a pool before you destroy the pool. This function may not
469 be called in interrupt context.
473 The interfaces described in subsequent portions of this document
474 take a DMA direction argument, which is an integer and takes on
475 one of the following values:
482 You should provide the exact DMA direction if you know it.
484 DMA_TO_DEVICE means "from main memory to the device"
485 DMA_FROM_DEVICE means "from the device to main memory"
486 It is the direction in which the data moves during the DMA
489 You are _strongly_ encouraged to specify this as precisely
492 If you absolutely cannot know the direction of the DMA transfer,
493 specify DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL. It means that the DMA can go in
494 either direction. The platform guarantees that you may legally
495 specify this, and that it will work, but this may be at the
496 cost of performance for example.
498 The value DMA_NONE is to be used for debugging. One can
499 hold this in a data structure before you come to know the
500 precise direction, and this will help catch cases where your
501 direction tracking logic has failed to set things up properly.
503 Another advantage of specifying this value precisely (outside of
504 potential platform-specific optimizations of such) is for debugging.
505 Some platforms actually have a write permission boolean which DMA
506 mappings can be marked with, much like page protections in the user
507 program address space. Such platforms can and do report errors in the
508 kernel logs when the DMA controller hardware detects violation of the
511 Only streaming mappings specify a direction, consistent mappings
512 implicitly have a direction attribute setting of
515 The SCSI subsystem tells you the direction to use in the
516 'sc_data_direction' member of the SCSI command your driver is
519 For Networking drivers, it's a rather simple affair. For transmit
520 packets, map/unmap them with the DMA_TO_DEVICE direction
521 specifier. For receive packets, just the opposite, map/unmap them
522 with the DMA_FROM_DEVICE direction specifier.
524 Using Streaming DMA mappings
526 The streaming DMA mapping routines can be called from interrupt
527 context. There are two versions of each map/unmap, one which will
528 map/unmap a single memory region, and one which will map/unmap a
531 To map a single region, you do:
533 struct device *dev = &my_dev->dev;
534 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
535 void *addr = buffer->ptr;
536 size_t size = buffer->len;
538 dma_handle = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
539 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle)) {
541 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
542 * delay and try again later or
545 goto map_error_handling;
550 dma_unmap_single(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
552 You should call dma_mapping_error() as dma_map_single() could fail and return
553 error. Not all DMA implementations support the dma_mapping_error() interface.
554 However, it is a good practice to call dma_mapping_error() interface, which
555 will invoke the generic mapping error check interface. Doing so will ensure
556 that the mapping code will work correctly on all DMA implementations without
557 any dependency on the specifics of the underlying implementation. Using the
558 returned address without checking for errors could result in failures ranging
559 from panics to silent data corruption. A couple of examples of incorrect ways
560 to check for errors that make assumptions about the underlying DMA
561 implementation are as follows and these are applicable to dma_map_page() as
565 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
567 dma_handle = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
568 if ((dma_handle & 0xffff != 0) || (dma_handle >= 0x1000000)) {
573 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
575 dma_handle = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
576 if (dma_handle == DMA_ERROR_CODE) {
580 You should call dma_unmap_single() when the DMA activity is finished, e.g.,
581 from the interrupt which told you that the DMA transfer is done.
583 Using CPU pointers like this for single mappings has a disadvantage:
584 you cannot reference HIGHMEM memory in this way. Thus, there is a
585 map/unmap interface pair akin to dma_{map,unmap}_single(). These
586 interfaces deal with page/offset pairs instead of CPU pointers.
589 struct device *dev = &my_dev->dev;
590 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
591 struct page *page = buffer->page;
592 unsigned long offset = buffer->offset;
593 size_t size = buffer->len;
595 dma_handle = dma_map_page(dev, page, offset, size, direction);
596 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle)) {
598 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
599 * delay and try again later or
602 goto map_error_handling;
607 dma_unmap_page(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
609 Here, "offset" means byte offset within the given page.
611 You should call dma_mapping_error() as dma_map_page() could fail and return
612 error as outlined under the dma_map_single() discussion.
614 You should call dma_unmap_page() when the DMA activity is finished, e.g.,
615 from the interrupt which told you that the DMA transfer is done.
617 With scatterlists, you map a region gathered from several regions by:
619 int i, count = dma_map_sg(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
620 struct scatterlist *sg;
622 for_each_sg(sglist, sg, count, i) {
623 hw_address[i] = sg_dma_address(sg);
624 hw_len[i] = sg_dma_len(sg);
627 where nents is the number of entries in the sglist.
629 The implementation is free to merge several consecutive sglist entries
630 into one (e.g. if DMA mapping is done with PAGE_SIZE granularity, any
631 consecutive sglist entries can be merged into one provided the first one
632 ends and the second one starts on a page boundary - in fact this is a huge
633 advantage for cards which either cannot do scatter-gather or have very
634 limited number of scatter-gather entries) and returns the actual number
635 of sg entries it mapped them to. On failure 0 is returned.
637 Then you should loop count times (note: this can be less than nents times)
638 and use sg_dma_address() and sg_dma_len() macros where you previously
639 accessed sg->address and sg->length as shown above.
641 To unmap a scatterlist, just call:
643 dma_unmap_sg(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
645 Again, make sure DMA activity has already finished.
647 PLEASE NOTE: The 'nents' argument to the dma_unmap_sg call must be
648 the _same_ one you passed into the dma_map_sg call,
649 it should _NOT_ be the 'count' value _returned_ from the
652 Every dma_map_{single,sg}() call should have its dma_unmap_{single,sg}()
653 counterpart, because the DMA address space is a shared resource and
654 you could render the machine unusable by consuming all DMA addresses.
656 If you need to use the same streaming DMA region multiple times and touch
657 the data in between the DMA transfers, the buffer needs to be synced
658 properly in order for the CPU and device to see the most up-to-date and
659 correct copy of the DMA buffer.
661 So, firstly, just map it with dma_map_{single,sg}(), and after each DMA
662 transfer call either:
664 dma_sync_single_for_cpu(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
668 dma_sync_sg_for_cpu(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
672 Then, if you wish to let the device get at the DMA area again,
673 finish accessing the data with the CPU, and then before actually
674 giving the buffer to the hardware call either:
676 dma_sync_single_for_device(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
680 dma_sync_sg_for_device(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
684 After the last DMA transfer call one of the DMA unmap routines
685 dma_unmap_{single,sg}(). If you don't touch the data from the first
686 dma_map_*() call till dma_unmap_*(), then you don't have to call the
687 dma_sync_*() routines at all.
689 Here is pseudo code which shows a situation in which you would need
690 to use the dma_sync_*() interfaces.
692 my_card_setup_receive_buffer(struct my_card *cp, char *buffer, int len)
696 mapping = dma_map_single(cp->dev, buffer, len, DMA_FROM_DEVICE);
697 if (dma_mapping_error(cp->dev, dma_handle)) {
699 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
700 * delay and try again later or
703 goto map_error_handling;
708 cp->rx_dma = mapping;
710 give_rx_buf_to_card(cp);
715 my_card_interrupt_handler(int irq, void *devid, struct pt_regs *regs)
717 struct my_card *cp = devid;
720 if (read_card_status(cp) == RX_BUF_TRANSFERRED) {
721 struct my_card_header *hp;
723 /* Examine the header to see if we wish
724 * to accept the data. But synchronize
725 * the DMA transfer with the CPU first
726 * so that we see updated contents.
728 dma_sync_single_for_cpu(&cp->dev, cp->rx_dma,
732 /* Now it is safe to examine the buffer. */
733 hp = (struct my_card_header *) cp->rx_buf;
734 if (header_is_ok(hp)) {
735 dma_unmap_single(&cp->dev, cp->rx_dma, cp->rx_len,
737 pass_to_upper_layers(cp->rx_buf);
738 make_and_setup_new_rx_buf(cp);
740 /* CPU should not write to
741 * DMA_FROM_DEVICE-mapped area,
742 * so dma_sync_single_for_device() is
743 * not needed here. It would be required
744 * for DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL mapping if
745 * the memory was modified.
747 give_rx_buf_to_card(cp);
752 Drivers converted fully to this interface should not use virt_to_bus() any
753 longer, nor should they use bus_to_virt(). Some drivers have to be changed a
754 little bit, because there is no longer an equivalent to bus_to_virt() in the
755 dynamic DMA mapping scheme - you have to always store the DMA addresses
756 returned by the dma_alloc_coherent(), dma_pool_alloc(), and dma_map_single()
757 calls (dma_map_sg() stores them in the scatterlist itself if the platform
758 supports dynamic DMA mapping in hardware) in your driver structures and/or
759 in the card registers.
761 All drivers should be using these interfaces with no exceptions. It
762 is planned to completely remove virt_to_bus() and bus_to_virt() as
763 they are entirely deprecated. Some ports already do not provide these
764 as it is impossible to correctly support them.
768 DMA address space is limited on some architectures and an allocation
769 failure can be determined by:
771 - checking if dma_alloc_coherent() returns NULL or dma_map_sg returns 0
773 - checking the dma_addr_t returned from dma_map_single() and dma_map_page()
774 by using dma_mapping_error():
776 dma_addr_t dma_handle;
778 dma_handle = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
779 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle)) {
781 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
782 * delay and try again later or
785 goto map_error_handling;
788 - unmap pages that are already mapped, when mapping error occurs in the middle
789 of a multiple page mapping attempt. These example are applicable to
790 dma_map_page() as well.
793 dma_addr_t dma_handle1;
794 dma_addr_t dma_handle2;
796 dma_handle1 = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
797 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle1)) {
799 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
800 * delay and try again later or
803 goto map_error_handling1;
805 dma_handle2 = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
806 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_handle2)) {
808 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
809 * delay and try again later or
812 goto map_error_handling2;
818 dma_unmap_single(dma_handle1);
821 Example 2: (if buffers are allocated in a loop, unmap all mapped buffers when
822 mapping error is detected in the middle)
825 dma_addr_t array[DMA_BUFFERS];
828 for (i = 0; i < DMA_BUFFERS; i++) {
832 dma_addr = dma_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
833 if (dma_mapping_error(dev, dma_addr)) {
835 * reduce current DMA mapping usage,
836 * delay and try again later or
839 goto map_error_handling;
841 array[i].dma_addr = dma_addr;
849 for (i = 0; i < save_index; i++) {
853 dma_unmap_single(array[i].dma_addr);
856 Networking drivers must call dev_kfree_skb() to free the socket buffer
857 and return NETDEV_TX_OK if the DMA mapping fails on the transmit hook
858 (ndo_start_xmit). This means that the socket buffer is just dropped in
861 SCSI drivers must return SCSI_MLQUEUE_HOST_BUSY if the DMA mapping
862 fails in the queuecommand hook. This means that the SCSI subsystem
863 passes the command to the driver again later.
865 Optimizing Unmap State Space Consumption
867 On many platforms, dma_unmap_{single,page}() is simply a nop.
868 Therefore, keeping track of the mapping address and length is a waste
869 of space. Instead of filling your drivers up with ifdefs and the like
870 to "work around" this (which would defeat the whole purpose of a
871 portable API) the following facilities are provided.
873 Actually, instead of describing the macros one by one, we'll
874 transform some example code.
876 1) Use DEFINE_DMA_UNMAP_{ADDR,LEN} in state saving structures.
889 DEFINE_DMA_UNMAP_ADDR(mapping);
890 DEFINE_DMA_UNMAP_LEN(len);
893 2) Use dma_unmap_{addr,len}_set() to set these values.
896 ringp->mapping = FOO;
901 dma_unmap_addr_set(ringp, mapping, FOO);
902 dma_unmap_len_set(ringp, len, BAR);
904 3) Use dma_unmap_{addr,len}() to access these values.
907 dma_unmap_single(dev, ringp->mapping, ringp->len,
912 dma_unmap_single(dev,
913 dma_unmap_addr(ringp, mapping),
914 dma_unmap_len(ringp, len),
917 It really should be self-explanatory. We treat the ADDR and LEN
918 separately, because it is possible for an implementation to only
919 need the address in order to perform the unmap operation.
923 If you are just writing drivers for Linux and do not maintain
924 an architecture port for the kernel, you can safely skip down
927 1) Struct scatterlist requirements.
929 Don't invent the architecture specific struct scatterlist; just use
930 <asm-generic/scatterlist.h>. You need to enable
931 CONFIG_NEED_SG_DMA_LENGTH if the architecture supports IOMMUs
932 (including software IOMMU).
936 Architectures must ensure that kmalloc'ed buffer is
937 DMA-safe. Drivers and subsystems depend on it. If an architecture
938 isn't fully DMA-coherent (i.e. hardware doesn't ensure that data in
939 the CPU cache is identical to data in main memory),
940 ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN must be set so that the memory allocator
941 makes sure that kmalloc'ed buffer doesn't share a cache line with
942 the others. See arch/arm/include/asm/cache.h as an example.
944 Note that ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN is about DMA memory alignment
945 constraints. You don't need to worry about the architecture data
946 alignment constraints (e.g. the alignment constraints about 64-bit
949 3) Supporting multiple types of IOMMUs
951 If your architecture needs to support multiple types of IOMMUs, you
952 can use include/linux/asm-generic/dma-mapping-common.h. It's a
953 library to support the DMA API with multiple types of IOMMUs. Lots
954 of architectures (x86, powerpc, sh, alpha, ia64, microblaze and
955 sparc) use it. Choose one to see how it can be used. If you need to
956 support multiple types of IOMMUs in a single system, the example of
957 x86 or powerpc helps.
961 This document, and the API itself, would not be in its current
962 form without the feedback and suggestions from numerous individuals.
963 We would like to specifically mention, in no particular order, the
966 Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>
967 Leo Dagum <dagum@barrel.engr.sgi.com>
968 Ralf Baechle <ralf@oss.sgi.com>
969 Grant Grundler <grundler@cup.hp.com>
970 Jay Estabrook <Jay.Estabrook@compaq.com>
971 Thomas Sailer <sailer@ife.ee.ethz.ch>
972 Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de>
973 Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
974 David Mosberger-Tang <davidm@hpl.hp.com>