linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH v1] media: uvcvideo: Cache URB header data before processing

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Date:   Wed, 8 Aug 2018 10:20:21 -0400 (EDT)
From:   Alan Stern <stern@...land.harvard.edu>
To:     Keiichi Watanabe <keiichiw@...omium.org>
cc:     Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@...asonboard.com>,
        Tomasz Figa <tfiga@...omium.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@...nel.org>,
        Linux Media Mailing List <linux-media@...r.kernel.org>,
        <kieran.bingham@...asonboard.com>,
        Douglas Anderson <dianders@...omium.org>,
        <ezequiel@...labora.com>, <matwey@....msu.ru>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v1] media: uvcvideo: Cache URB header data before
 processing

On Wed, 8 Aug 2018, Keiichi Watanabe wrote:

> Hi Laurent, Kieran, Tomasz,
> 
> Thank you for reviews and suggestions.
> I want to do additional measurements for improving the performance.
> 
> Let me clarify my understanding:
> Currently, if the platform doesn't support coherent-DMA (e.g. ARM),
> urb_buffer is allocated by usb_alloc_coherent with
> URB_NO_TRANSFER_DMA_MAP flag instead of using kmalloc.

Not exactly.  You are mixing up allocation with mapping.  The speed of 
the allocation doesn't matter; all that matters is whether the memory 
is cached and when it gets mapped/unmapped.

> This is because we want to avoid frequent DMA mappings, which are
> generally expensive.
> However, memories allocated in this way are not cached.
> 
> So, we wonder if using usb_alloc_coherent is really fast.
> In other words, we want to know which is better:
> "No DMA mapping/Uncached memory" v.s. "Frequent DMA mapping/Cached memory".

There is no need to wonder.  "Frequent DMA mapping/Cached memory" is 
always faster than "No DMA mapping/Uncached memory".

The only issue is that on some platform (such as x86) but not others,
there is a third option: "No DMA mapping/Cached memory".  On platforms 
which support it, this is the fastest option.

Alan Stern