From: Reinette Chatre
> Sent: 26 June 2019 18:49
>
> Cache pseudo-locking involves preloading a region of physical memory into a
> reserved portion of cache that no task or CPU can subsequently fill into and
> from that point on will only serve cache hits. At this time it is only
> possible to create cache pseudo-locked regions in either L2 or L3 cache,
> supporting systems that support either L2 Cache Allocation Technology (CAT)
> or L3 CAT because CAT is the mechanism used to manage reservations of cache
> portions.
While this is a 'nice' hardware feature for some kinds of embedded systems
I don't see how it can be sensibly used inside a Linux kernel.
There are an awful lot of places where things can go horribly wrong.
I can imagine:
- Multiple requests to lock regions that end up trying to use the same
set-associative cache lines leaving none for normal operation.
- Excessive cache line bouncing because fewer lines are available.
- The effect of cache invalidate requests for the locked addresses.
- I suspect the Linux kernel can do full cache invalidates at certain times.
You've not given a use case.
David
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