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Linus Torvalds 170d13ca3a x86: re-introduce non-generic memcpy_{to,from}io 
This has been broken forever, and nobody ever really noticed because
it's purely a performance issue.

Long long ago, in commit 6175ddf06b ("x86: Clean up mem*io functions")
Brian Gerst simplified the memory copies to and from iomem, since on
x86, the instructions to access iomem are exactly the same as the
regular instructions.

That is technically true, and things worked, and nobody said anything.
Besides, back then the regular memcpy was pretty simple and worked fine.

Nobody noticed except for David Laight, that is.  David has a testing a
TLP monitor he was writing for an FPGA, and has been occasionally
complaining about how memcpy_toio() writes things one byte at a time.

Which is completely unacceptable from a performance standpoint, even if
it happens to technically work.

The reason it's writing one byte at a time is because while it's
technically true that accesses to iomem are the same as accesses to
regular memory on x86, the _granularity_ (and ordering) of accesses
matter to iomem in ways that they don't matter to regular cached memory.

In particular, when ERMS is set, we default to using "rep movsb" for
larger memory copies.  That is indeed perfectly fine for real memory,
since the whole point is that the CPU is going to do cacheline
optimizations and executes the memory copy efficiently for cached
memory.

With iomem? Not so much.  With iomem, "rep movsb" will indeed work, but
it will copy things one byte at a time. Slowly and ponderously.

Now, originally, back in 2010 when commit 6175ddf06b was done, we
didn't use ERMS, and this was much less noticeable.

Our normal memcpy() was simpler in other ways too.

Because in fact, it's not just about using the string instructions.  Our
memcpy() these days does things like "read and write overlapping values"
to handle the last bytes of the copy.  Again, for normal memory,
overlapping accesses isn't an issue.  For iomem? It can be.

So this re-introduces the specialized memcpy_toio(), memcpy_fromio() and
memset_io() functions.  It doesn't particularly optimize them, but it
tries to at least not be horrid, or do overlapping accesses.  In fact,
this uses the existing __inline_memcpy() function that we still had
lying around that uses our very traditional "rep movsl" loop followed by
movsw/movsb for the final bytes.

Somebody may decide to try to improve on it, but if we've gone almost a
decade with only one person really ever noticing and complaining, maybe
it's not worth worrying about further, once it's not _completely_ broken?

Reported-by: David Laight <David.Laight@aculab.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2019-01-04 18:15:33 -08:00
arch x86: re-introduce non-generic memcpy_{to,from}io 2019-01-04 18:15:33 -08:00
block for-4.21/block-20190102 2019-01-02 18:49:58 -08:00
certs export.h: remove VMLINUX_SYMBOL() and VMLINUX_SYMBOL_STR() 2018-08-22 23:21:44 +09:00
crypto Kconfig updates for v4.21 2018-12-29 13:03:29 -08:00
Documentation Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2019-01-03 12:53:47 -08:00
drivers make 'user_access_begin()' do 'access_ok()' 2019-01-04 12:56:09 -08:00
firmware firmware: refactor firmware/Makefile 2018-12-23 10:10:32 +09:00
fs Remove 'type' argument from access_ok() function 2019-01-03 18:57:57 -08:00
include make 'user_access_begin()' do 'access_ok()' 2019-01-04 12:56:09 -08:00
init Merge tag 'devicetree-for-4.21' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/robh/linux 2018-12-28 20:08:34 -08:00
ipc ipc: IPCMNI limit check for semmni 2018-10-31 08:54:14 -07:00
kernel make 'user_access_begin()' do 'access_ok()' 2019-01-04 12:56:09 -08:00
lib make 'user_access_begin()' do 'access_ok()' 2019-01-04 12:56:09 -08:00
LICENSES This is a fairly typical cycle for documentation. There's some welcome 2018-10-24 18:01:11 +01:00
mm Remove 'type' argument from access_ok() function 2019-01-03 18:57:57 -08:00
net Remove 'type' argument from access_ok() function 2019-01-03 18:57:57 -08:00
samples Merge branch 'next-seccomp' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jmorris/linux-security 2019-01-02 09:48:13 -08:00
scripts Tracing changes for v4.21: 2018-12-31 11:46:59 -08:00
security Remove 'type' argument from access_ok() function 2019-01-03 18:57:57 -08:00
sound Remove 'type' argument from access_ok() function 2019-01-03 18:57:57 -08:00
tools Remove 'type' argument from access_ok() function 2019-01-03 18:57:57 -08:00
usr user/Makefile: Fix typo and capitalization in comment section 2018-12-11 00:18:03 +09:00
virt Remove 'type' argument from access_ok() function 2019-01-03 18:57:57 -08:00
.clang-format page cache: Convert find_get_pages_contig to XArray 2018-10-21 10:46:34 -04:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set git diff driver for C source code files 2016-10-07 18:46:30 -07:00
.gitignore kbuild: Add support for DT binding schema checks 2018-12-13 09:41:32 -06:00
.mailmap Merge tag 'nand/for-4.21' of git://git.infradead.org/linux-mtd into mtd/next 2018-12-18 19:59:16 +01:00
COPYING COPYING: use the new text with points to the license files 2018-03-23 12:41:45 -06:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: update entry for MMP platform 2018-12-03 12:39:57 -08:00
Kbuild kbuild: remove unused cmd_gentimeconst 2018-12-25 00:10:30 +09:00
Kconfig kconfig: move the "Executable file formats" menu to fs/Kconfig.binfmt 2018-08-02 08:06:55 +09:00
MAINTAINERS Merge branch 'for-linus-4.21-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rw/uml 2019-01-02 18:39:22 -08:00
Makefile Kbuild updates for v4.21 2018-12-29 12:03:17 -08:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

README 

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.