Linux Cross Reference
Linux/Documentation/DMA-mapping.txt

                           Dynamic DMA mapping
                           ===================
   
                    David S. Miller <davem@redhat.com>
                    Richard Henderson <rth@cygnus.com>
                     Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com>
   
   Most of the 64bit platforms have special hardware that translates bus
   addresses (DMA addresses) to physical addresses similarly to how page
  tables and/or TLB translate virtual addresses to physical addresses.
  This is needed so that e.g. PCI devices can access with a Single Address
  Cycle (32bit DMA address) any page in the 64bit physical address space.
  Previously in Linux those 64bit platforms had to set artificial limits on
  the maximum RAM size in the system, so that the virt_to_bus() static scheme
  works (the DMA address translation tables were simply filled on bootup
  to map each bus address to the physical page __pa(bus_to_virt())).
  
  So that Linux can use the dynamic DMA mapping, it needs some help from the
  drivers, namely it has to take into account that DMA addresses should be
  mapped only for the time they are actually used and unmapped after the DMA
  transfer.
  
  The following API will work of course even on platforms where no such
  hardware exists, see e.g. include/asm-i386/pci.h for how it is implemented on
  top of the virt_to_bus interface.
  
  First of all, you should make sure
  
  #include <linux/pci.h>
  
  is in your driver. This file will obtain for you the definition of
  the dma_addr_t type which should be used everywhere you hold a DMA
  (bus) address returned from the DMA mapping functions.
  
                          DMA addressing limitations
  
  Does your device have any DMA addressing limitations?  For example, is
  your device only capable of driving the low order 24-bits of address
  on the PCI bus for DMA transfers?  If your device can handle any PCI
  dma address fully, then please skip to the next section, the rest of
  this section does not concern your device.
  
  For correct operation, you must interrogate the PCI layer in your
  device probe routine to see if the PCI controller on the machine can
  properly support the DMA addressing limitation your device has.  This
  query is performed via a call to pci_dma_supported():
  
          int pci_dma_supported(struct pci_dev *pdev, dma_addr_t device_mask)
  
  Here, pdev is a pointer to the PCI device struct of your device, and
  device_mask is a bit mask describing which bits of a PCI address your
  device supports.  It returns non-zero if your card can perform DMA
  properly on the machine.  If it returns zero, your device can not
  perform DMA properly on this platform, and attempting to do so will
  result in undefined behavior.
  
  In the failure case, you have two options:
  
  1) Use some non-DMA mode for data transfer, if possible.
  2) Ignore this device and do not initialize it.
  
  It is recommended that your driver print a kernel KERN_WARN message
  when you do one of these two things.  In this manner, if a user of
  your driver reports that performance is bad or that the device is not
  even detected, you can ask him for the kernel messages to find out
  exactly why.
  
  So if, for example, you device can only drive the low 24-bits of
  address during PCI bus mastering you might do something like:
  
          if (! pci_dma_supported(pdev, 0x00ffffff))
                  goto ignore_this_device;
  
  There is a case which we are aware of at this time, which is worth
  mentioning in this documentation.  If your device supports multiple
  functions (for example a sound card provides playback and record
  functions) and the various different functions have _different_
  DMA addressing limitations, you may wish to probe each mask and
  only provide the functionality which the machine can handle.
  Here is pseudo-code showing how this might be done:
  
          #define PLAYBACK_ADDRESS_BITS   0xffffffff
          #define RECORD_ADDRESS_BITS     0x00ffffff
  
          struct my_sound_card *card;
          struct pci_dev *pdev;
  
          ...
          if (pci_dma_supported(pdev, PLAYBACK_ADDRESS_BITS)) {
                  card->playback_enabled = 1;
          } else {
                  card->playback_enabled = 0;
                  printk(KERN_WARN "%s: Playback disabled due to DMA limitations.\n",
                         card->name);
          }
          if (pci_dma_supported(pdev, RECORD_ADDRESS_BITS)) {
                  card->record_enabled = 1;
          } else {
                  card->record_enabled = 0;
                 printk(KERN_WARN "%s: Record disabled due to DMA limitations.\n",
                        card->name);
         }
 
 A sound card was used as an example here because this genre of PCI
 devices seems to be littered with ISA chips given a PCI front end,
 and thus retaining the 16MB DMA addressing limitations of ISA.
 
                         Types of DMA mappings
 
 There are two types of DMA mappings:
 
 - Consistent DMA mappings which are usually mapped at driver
   initialization, unmapped at the end and for which the hardware should
   guarantee that the device and the cpu can access the data
   in parallel and will see updates made by each other without any
   explicit software flushing.
 
   Think of "consistent" as "synchronous" or "coherent".
 
   Good examples of what to use consistent mappings for are:
 
         - Network card DMA ring descriptors.
         - SCSI adapter mailbox command data structures.
         - Device firmware microcode executed out of
           main memory.
 
   The invariant these examples all require is that any cpu store
   to memory is immediately visible to the device, and vice
   versa.  Consistent mappings guarantee this.
 
 - Streaming DMA mappings which are usually mapped for one DMA transfer,
   unmapped right after it (unless you use pci_dma_sync below) and for which
   hardware can optimize for sequential accesses.
 
   This of "streaming" as "asynchronous" or "outside the coherency
   domain".
 
   Good examples of what to use streaming mappings for are:
 
         - Networking buffers transmitted/received by a device.
         - Filesystem buffers written/read by a SCSI device.
 
   The interfaces for using this type of mapping were designed in
   such a way that an implementation can make whatever performance
   optimizations the hardware allows.  To this end, when using
   such mappings you must be explicit about what you want to happen.
 
                  Using Consistent DMA mappings.
 
 To allocate and map a consistent DMA region, you should do:
 
         dma_addr_t dma_handle;
 
         cpu_addr = pci_alloc_consistent(dev, size, &dma_handle);
 
 where dev is a struct pci_dev *. You should pass NULL for PCI like buses
 where devices don't have struct pci_dev (like ISA, EISA).
 
 This argument is needed because the DMA translations may be bus
 specific (and often is private to the bus which the device is attached
 to).
 
 Size is the length of the region you want to allocate.
 
 This routine will allocate RAM for that region, so it acts similarly to
 __get_free_pages (but takes size instead of a page order).
 
 It returns two values: the virtual address which you can use to access
 it from the CPU and dma_handle which you pass to the card.
 
 The cpu return address and the DMA bus master address are both
 guaranteed to be aligned to the smallest PAGE_SIZE order which
 is greater than or equal to the requested size.  This invariant
 exists (for example) to guarantee that if you allocate a chunk
 which is smaller than or equal to 64 kilobytes, the extent of the
 buffer you receive will not cross a 64K boundary.
 
 To unmap and free such a DMA region, you call:
 
         pci_free_consistent(dev, size, cpu_addr, dma_handle);
 
 where dev, size are the same as in the above call and cpu_addr and
 dma_handle are the values pci_alloc_consistent returned to you.
 
                         DMA Direction
 
 The interfaces described in subsequent portions of this document
 take a DMA direction argument, which is an integer and takes on
 one of the following values:
 
  PCI_DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL
  PCI_DMA_TODEVICE
  PCI_DMA_FROMDEVICE
  PCI_DMA_NONE
 
 One should provide the exact DMA direction if you know it.
 
 PCI_DMA_TODEVICE means "from main memory to the PCI device"
 PCI_DMA_FROMDEVICE means "from the PCI device to main memory"
 
 You are _strongly_ encouraged to specify this as precisely
 as you possibly can.
 
 If you absolutely cannot know the direction of the DMA transfer,
 specify PCI_DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL.  It means that the DMA can go in
 either direction.  The platform guarantees that you may legally
 specify this, and that it will work, but this may be at the
 cost of performance for example.
 
 The value PCI_DMA_NONE is to be used for debugging.  One can
 hold this in a data structure before you come to know the
 precise direction, and this will help catch cases where your
 direction tracking logic has failed to set things up properly.
 
 Another advantage of specifying this value precisely (outside
 of potential platform-specific optimizations of such) is for
 debugging.  Some platforms actually have a write permission
 boolean which DMA mappings can be marked with, much like page
 protections in a user program can have.  Such platforms can
 and do report errors in the kernel logs when the PCI controller
 hardware detects violation of the permission setting.
 
 Only streaming mappings specify a direction, consistent mappings
 implicitly have a direction attribute setting of
 PCI_DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL.
 
 The SCSI subsystem provides mechanisms for you to easily obtain
 the direction to use, in the SCSI command:
 
         scsi_to_pci_dma_dir(SCSI_DIRECTION)
 
 Where SCSI_DIRECTION is obtained from the 'sc_data_direction'
 member of the SCSI command your driver is working on.  The
 mentioned interface above returns a value suitable for passing
 into the streaming DMA mapping interfaces below.
 
 For Networking drivers, it's a rather simple affair.  For transmit
 packets, map/unmap them with the PCI_DMA_TODEVICE direction
 specifier.  For receive packets, just the opposite, map/unmap them
 with the PCI_DMA_FROMDEVICE direction specifier.
 
                   Using Streaming DMA mappings
 
 The streaming DMA mapping routines can be called from interrupt context.
 There are two versions of each map/unmap, one which map/unmap a single
 memory region, one which map/unmap a scatterlist.
 
 To map a single region, you do:
 
         dma_addr_t dma_handle;
 
         dma_handle = pci_map_single(dev, addr, size, direction);
 
 and to unmap it:
 
         pci_unmap_single(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
 
 You should call pci_unmap_single when the DMA activity is finished, e.g.
 from interrupt which told you the DMA transfer is done.
 
 Similarly with scatterlists, you map a region gathered from several regions by:
 
         int i, count = pci_map_sg(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
         struct scatterlist *sg;
 
         for (i = 0, sg = sglist; i < count; i++, sg++) {
                 hw_address[i] = sg_dma_address(sg);
                 hw_len[i] = sg_dma_len(sg);
         }
 
 where nents is the number of entries in the sglist.
 
 The implementation is free to merge several consecutive sglist entries
 into one (e.g. if DMA mapping is done with PAGE_SIZE granularity, any
 consecutive sglist entries can be merged into one provided the first one
 ends and the second one starts on a page boundary - in fact this is a huge
 advantage for cards which either cannot do scatter-gather or have very
 limited number of scatter-gather entries) and returns the actual number
 of sg entries it mapped them to.
 
 Then you should loop count times (note: this can be less than nents times)
 and use sg_dma_address() and sg_dma_length() macros where you previously
 accessed sg->address and sg->length as shown above.
 
 To unmap a scatterlist, just call:
 
         pci_unmap_sg(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
 
 Again, make sure DMA activity finished.
 
 PLEASE NOTE:  The 'nents' argument to the pci_unmap_sg call must be
               the _same_ one you passed into the pci_map_sg call,
               it should _NOT_ be the 'count' value _returned_ from the
               pci_map_sg call.
 
 Every pci_map_{single,sg} call should have its pci_unmap_{single,sg}
 counterpart, because the bus address space is a shared resource (although
 in some ports the mapping is per each BUS so less devices contend for the
 same bus address space) and you could render the machine unusable by eating
 all bus addresses.
 
 If you need to use the same streaming DMA region multiple times and touch
 the data in between the DMA transfers, just map it
 with pci_map_{single,sg}, after each DMA transfer call either:
 
         pci_dma_sync_single(dev, dma_handle, size, direction);
 
 or:
 
         pci_dma_sync_sg(dev, sglist, nents, direction);
 
 and after the last DMA transfer call one of the DMA unmap routines
 pci_unmap_{single,sg}. If you don't touch the data from the first pci_map_*
 call till pci_unmap_*, then you don't have to call the pci_sync_*
 routines at all.
 
 Here is pseudo code which shows a situation in which you would need
 to use the pci_dma_sync_*() interfaces.
 
         my_card_setup_receive_buffer(struct my_card *cp, char *buffer, int len)
         {
                 dma_addr_t mapping;
 
                 mapping = pci_map_single(cp->pdev, buffer, len, PCI_DMA_FROMDEVICE);
 
                 cp->rx_buf = buffer;
                 cp->rx_len = len;
                 cp->rx_dma = mapping;
 
                 give_rx_buf_to_card(cp);
         }
 
         ...
 
         my_card_interrupt_handler(int irq, void *devid, struct pt_regs *regs)
         {
                 struct my_card *cp = devid;
 
                 ...
                 if (read_card_status(cp) == RX_BUF_TRANSFERRED) {
                         struct my_card_header *hp;
 
                         /* Examine the header to see if we wish
                          * to accept the data.  But synchronize
                          * the DMA transfer with the CPU first
                          * so that we see updated contents.
                          */
                         pci_dma_sync_single(cp->pdev, cp->rx_dma, cp->rx_len,
                                             PCI_DMA_FROMDEVICE);
 
                         /* Now it is safe to examine the buffer. */
                         hp = (struct my_card_header *) cp->rx_buf;
                         if (header_is_ok(hp)) {
                                 pci_unmap_single(cp->pdev, cp->rx_dma, cp->rx_len,
                                                  PCI_DMA_FROMDEVICE);
                                 pass_to_upper_layers(cp->rx_buf);
                                 make_and_setup_new_rx_buf(cp);
                         } else {
                                 /* Just give the buffer back to the card. */
                                 give_rx_buf_to_card(cp);
                         }
                 }
         }
 
 Drivers converted fully to this interface should not use virt_to_bus any
 longer, nor should they use bus_to_virt. Some drivers have to be changed a
 little bit, because there is no longer an equivalent to bus_to_virt in the
 dynamic DMA mapping scheme - you have to always store the DMA addresses
 returned by the pci_alloc_consistent and pci_map_single calls (pci_map_sg
 stores them in the scatterlist itself if the platform supports dynamic DMA
 mapping in hardware) in your driver structures and/or in the card registers.
 
 This document, and the API itself, would not be in it's current
 form without the feedback and suggestions from numerous individuals.
 We would like to specifically mention, in no particular order, the
 following people:
 
         Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>
         Leo Dagum <dagum@barrel.engr.sgi.com>
         Ralf Baechle <ralf@oss.sgi.com>
         Grant Grundler <grundler@cup.hp.com>
         Jay Estabrook <Jay.Estabrook@compaq.com>
         Thomas Sailer <sailer@ife.ee.ethz.ch>