Re: [PATCH] hptiop: HighPoint RocketRAID 3xxx controller driver

[Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>]

On Mon, 2006-05-15 at 03:25 -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > On Mon, 2006-05-15 at 14:22 +0800, HighPoint Linux Team wrote:
> >> Could you give more explanation about pci posting flush? When (and why) do we need it?
> > 
> > pci posting is where the chipset internally delays (posts) writes (as
> > done by writel and such) to see if more writes will come that can then
> > be combined into one burst. While in practice these queues are finite
> > (and often have a timeout) it's bad practice to depend on that. The
> > simplest way to flush out this posting is to do a (dummy) readl() from
> > the same device. (alternative is to do dma from the device to ram, but
> > readl() is a lot easier ;)
> > 
> >> In an old posting (http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/5/8/278) said pci posting flush is unnecessary - is it correct?
> > 
> > no not really, not as a general statement.
> 
> ACK.
> 
> Generally speaking, readl() is the best way to ensure that all writes 
> have been flushed across various layers of PCI bridges, etc.
> 
> It is particularly important to get this right if you are issuing a 
> delay (i.e. udelay) after a write.  If the write is not guaranteed to be 
> flushed at the time the delay begins, then you are no longer truly 
> delaying for the time requested.

another typical case is at io submission or when you disable irqs in the
hardware..


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