Re: [RFC PATCH 1/8] x86/cpufeatures: Enumerate MOVDIRI instruction

From: Fenghua Yu
Date: Tue Jun 19 2018 - 18:35:55 EST


On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 12:32:14AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Jun 2018, Fenghua Yu wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 10:57:44AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > > On Fri, 15 Jun 2018, Fenghua Yu wrote:
> > >
> > > > MOVDIRI moves doubleword or quadword from register to memory through
> > > > direct store which is implemented by using write combining (WC) for
> > > > writing data directly into memory without caching the data.
> > >
> > > And that is useful for what?
> >
> > Programmable agents can handle streaming offload (e.g. high speed packet
> > processing in network). Hardware implements a doorbell (tail pointer)
> > register that is updated by software when adding new work-elements to
> > the streaming offload work-queue.
> >
> > MOVDIRI can be used as the doorbell write which is a 4-byte or 8-byte
> > uncachable write to MMIO. MOVDIRI has lower overhead than other ways
> > to write the doorbell.
> >
> > In low latency offload (e.g. Non-Volatile Memory, etc), MOVDIR64B writes
> > work descriptors (and data in some cases) to device-hosted work-queues
> > with atomicity.
>
> Makes sense, but why is this not part of the changelog ?

Sorry. I forgot to put the usage info in the commit description. I will
add it in the next version.

>
> Thanks,
>
> tglx

Thanks.

-Fenghua