On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 5:19 PM, Richard Henderson <r...@twiddle.net> wrote: > On 09/27/2011 10:17 AM, Blue Swirl wrote: >> On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 5:01 PM, Richard Henderson <r...@twiddle.net> wrote: >>> On 09/27/2011 09:53 AM, Blue Swirl wrote: >>>>>> So how would you emulate cache lines with line locking on KVM? >>>> The cache would be a MMIO device which registers to handle all memory >>>> space. Configuring the cache controller changes how the device >>>> operates. Put this device between CPU and memory and other devices. >>>> Performance would probably be horrible, so CPU should disable the >>>> device automatically after some time. >>>> >>> >>> Seems like a better alternative would be to add an mmio device when >>> a line is actually locked. And the device would cover *only* the >>> locked line. I assume that following the boot process these lines >>> are unlocked, and the normal running state of the system would have >>> none of these mmio devices active. >> >> The BIOS may also attempt to perform tests with the cache device, >> probe for cache sizes or read back I/D TLB lines via diagnostic modes. >> That wouldn't work in your approach. > > Err... why not?
This is not related to the locked cache line mode. The BIOS could just perform ordinary writes and reads from random memory addresses and expect that the cache diagnostics registers change accordingly. The cache device would have to cover all of memory to catch the accesses and then update the registers.
