Re: [PATCH] x86: set PAE PHYSICAL_MASK_SHIFT to match 64-bit

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Thu Jun 05 2008 - 13:02:28 EST


Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:

We could have an auction:

Do I hear 46? 47? 48? 50? 52! Going once, twice, 52 bits!

Anyway, we can fix it later in a separate patch. This is a change-as-little-as-possible bugfix patch.


It should either be 52 bits or dynamic based on CPUID information. The latter is very expensive.

If there end up being additional control bits assigned in this space we won't use them since we know the size of the address space (which won't include the control bits) and thus will leave them at zero.

It's largely theoretical, since I believe Linux on x86-64 relies on virtual >= physical+N, where I believe N is about 3 bits, and the page table format or page size need to change to support more than 48 bits of virtual address space.

-hpa
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/