[Intel-gfx] [PATCH v4] drm/i915: Add IOCTL Param to control data port coherency.

[Lis, Tomasz]

On 2018-07-10 20:03, Lis, Tomasz wrote:
>
>
> On 2018-07-09 18:28, Tvrtko Ursulin wrote:
>>
>> On 09/07/2018 14:20, Tomasz Lis wrote:
>>>
>>> diff --git a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_lrc.h 
>>> b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_lrc.h
>>> index 1593194..f6965ae 100644
>>> --- a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_lrc.h
>>> +++ b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_lrc.h
>>> [...]
>>> +/*
>>> + * When data port level coherency is enabled, the GPU will update 
>>> memory
>>> + * buffers shared with CPU, by forcing internal cache units to send 
>>> memory
>>> + * writes to real RAM faster. Keeping such coherency has 
>>> performance cost.
>>
>> Is this comment correct? Is it actually sending memory writes to 
>> _RAM_, or just the coherency mode enabled, even if only targetting 
>> CPU or shared cache, which adds a cost?
> I'm not sure whether there are further coherency modes to choose how 
> "deep" coherency goes. The use case of OCL Team is to see gradual 
> changes in the buffers on CPU side while the execution progresses. 
> Write to RAM is needed to achieve that. And that limits performance by 
> using RAM bandwidth.

It was pointed out to me that last level cache is shared between CPU and 
GPU on non-atoms. Which means my argument was invalid, an most likely 
the coherency option does not enforce RAM write. I will update the comment.
-Tomasz