udmabuf is a Linux device driver that allocates contiguous memory blocks in the kernel space as DMA buffers and makes them available from the user space. It is intended that these memory blocks are used as DMA buffers when a user application implements device driver in user space using UIO (User space I/O).

A DMA buffer allocated by udmabuf can be accessed from the user space by opneing the device file (e.g. /dev/udmabuf0) and mapping to the user memory space, or using the read()/write() functions.

CPU cache for the allocated DMA buffer can be disabled by setting the O_SYNC flag when opening the device file. It is also possible to flush or invalidate CPU cache while retaining CPU cache enabled.

The physical address of a DMA buffer allocated by udmabuf can be obtained by reading /sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/phys_addr.

The size of a DMA buffer and the device minor number can be specified when the device driver is loaded (e.g. when loaded via the insmod command). Some platforms allow to specify them in the device tree.

Figure 1. Architecture

• OS : Linux Kernel Version 3.6 - 3.8, 3.18, 4.4, 4.8, 4.12, 4.14, 4.19 (the author tested on 3.18, 4.4, 4.8, 4.12, 4.14).
• CPU: ARM Cortex-A9 (Xilinx ZYNQ / Altera CycloneV SoC)
• CPU: ARM64 Cortex-A53 (Xilinx ZYNQ UltraScale+ MPSoC)
• CPU: x86(64bit) However, verification is not enough. I hope the results from everyone. In addition, there is a limit to the following feature at the moment.
  • Can not control of the CPU cache by O_SYNC flag . Always CPU cache is valid.
  • Can not various settings by the device tree.

The following Makefile is included in the repository.

HOST_ARCH       ?= $(shell uname -m | sed -e s/arm.*/arm/ -e s/aarch64.*/arm64/)
ARCH            ?= $(shell uname -m | sed -e s/arm.*/arm/ -e s/aarch64.*/arm64/)
KERNEL_SRC_DIR  ?= /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build

ifeq ($(ARCH), arm)
 ifneq ($(HOST_ARCH), arm)
   CROSS_COMPILE  ?= arm-linux-gnueabihf-
 endif
endif
ifeq ($(ARCH), arm64)
 ifneq ($(HOST_ARCH), arm64)
   CROSS_COMPILE  ?= aarch64-linux-gnu-
 endif
endif

obj-m := udmabuf.o

all:
	make -C $(KERNEL_SRC_DIR) ARCH=$(ARCH) CROSS_COMPILE=$(CROSS_COMPILE) M=$(PWD) modules

clean:
	make -C $(KERNEL_SRC_DIR) ARCH=$(ARCH) CROSS_COMPILE=$(CROSS_COMPILE) M=$(PWD) clean

Load the udmabuf kernel driver using insmod. The size of a DMA buffer should be provided as an argument as follows. The device driver is created, and allocates a DMA buffer with the specified size. The maximum number of DMA buffers that can be allocated using insmod is 8 (udmabuf0/1/2/3/4/5/6/7).

zynq$ insmod udmabuf.ko udmabuf0=1048576
udmabuf udmabuf0: driver installed
udmabuf udmabuf0: major number   = 248
udmabuf udmabuf0: minor number   = 0
udmabuf udmabuf0: phys address   = 0x1e900000
udmabuf udmabuf0: buffer size    = 1048576
udmabuf udmabuf0: dma coherent   = 0
zynq$ ls -la /dev/udmabuf0
crw------- 1 root root 248, 0 Dec  1 09:34 /dev/udmabuf0

In the above result, the device is only read/write accessible by root. If the permission needs to be changed at the load of the kernel module, create /etc/udev/rules.d/99-udmabuf.rules with the following content.

KERNEL=="udmabuf[0-9]*", GROUP="root", MODE="0666"

The module can be uninstalled by the rmmod command.

zynq$ rmmod udmabuf
udmabuf udmabuf0: driver uninstalled

For details, refer to the following URL.

• https://github.com/ikwzm/udmabuf-kmod-dpkg

In addition to the allocation via the insmod command and its arguments, DMA buffers can be allocated by specifying the size in the device tree file. When a device tree file contains an entry like the following, udmabuf will allocate buffers and create device drivers when loaded by insmod.

		udmabuf@0x00 {
			compatible = "ikwzm,udmabuf-0.10.a";
			device-name = "udmabuf0";
			minor-number = <0>;
			size = <0x00100000>;
		};

zynq$ insmod udmabuf.ko
udmabuf udmabuf0: driver installed
udmabuf udmabuf0: major number   = 248
udmabuf udmabuf0: minor number   = 0
udmabuf udmabuf0: phys address   = 0x1e900000
udmabuf udmabuf0: buffer size    = 1048576
udmabuf udmabuf0: dma coherent  = 0
zynq$ ls -la /dev/udmabuf0
crw------- 1 root root 248, 0 Dec  1 09:34 /dev/udmabuf0

The following properties can be set in the device tree.

• compatible
• size
• minor-number
• device-name
• sync-mode
• sync-always
• sync-offset
• sync-size
• sync-direction
• dma-coherent
• memory-region

The compatible property is used to set the corresponding device driver when loading udmabuf. The compatible property is mandatory. Be sure to specify compatible property as "ikwzm,udmabuf-0.10.a".

The size property is used to set the capacity of DMA buffer in bytes. The size property is mandatory.

		udmabuf@0x00 {
			compatible = "ikwzm,udmabuf-0.10.a";
			size = <0x00100000>;
		};

The minor-number property is used to set the minor number. The valid minor number range is 0 to 255. A minor number provided as insmod argument will has higher precedence, and when definition in the device tree has colliding number, creation of the device defined in the device tree will fail.

The minor-number property is optional. When the minor-number property is not specified, udmabuf automatically assigns an appropriate one.

		udmabuf@0x00 {
			compatible = "ikwzm,udmabuf-0.10.a";
			minor-number = <0>;
			size = <0x00100000>;
		};

The device-name property is used to set the name of device.

The device-name property is optional. The device name is determined as follow:

1. If device-name property is specified, the value of device-name property is used.
2. If device-name property is not present, and if minor-number property is specified, sprintf("udmabuf%d", minor-number) is used.
3. If device-name property is not present, and if minor-number property is not present, the entry name of the device tree is used (udmabuf@0x00 in this example).

		udmabuf@0x00 {
			compatible = "ikwzm,udmabuf-0.10.a";
			device-name = "udmabuf0";
			size = <0x00100000>;
		};

The sync-mode property is used to configure the behavior when udmabuf is opened with the O_SYNC flag.

• sync-mode=<1>: If O_SYNC is specified or sync-always property is specified, CPU cache is disabled. Otherwise CPU cache is enabled.
• sync-mode=<2>: If O_SYNC is specified or sync-always property is specified, CPU cache is disabled but CPU uses write-combine when writing data to DMA buffer improves performance by combining multiple write accesses. Otherwise CPU cache is enabled.
• sync-mode=<3>: If O_SYNC is specified or sync-always property is specified, DMA coherency mode is used. Otherwise CPU cache is enabled.

The sync-mode property is optional. When the sync-mode property is not specified, sync-mode is set to <1>.

		udmabuf@0x00 {
			compatible = "ikwzm,udmabuf-0.10.a";
			size = <0x00100000>;
			sync-mode = <2>;
		};

Details on O_SYNC and cache management will be described in the next section.

If the sync-always property is specified, when opening udmabuf, it specifies that the operation specified by the sync-mode property will always be performed regardless of O_SYNC specification.

The sync-always property is optional.

		udmabuf@0x00 {
			compatible = "ikwzm,udmabuf-0.10.a";
			size = <0x00100000>;
			sync-mode = <2>;
			sync-always;
		};

Details on O_SYNC and cache management will be described in the next section.

The sync-offset property is used to set the start of the buffer range when manually controlling the cache of udmabuf.

The sync-offset property is optional. When the sync-offset property is not specified, sync-offset is set to <0>.

Details on cache management will be described in the next section.

The sync-size property is used to set the size of the buffer range when manually controlling the cache of udmabuf.

The sync-size property is optional. When the sync-size property is not specified, sync-size is set to <0>.

Details on cache management will be described in the next section.

The sync-direction property is used to set the direction of DMA when manually controlling the cache of udmabuf.

• sync-direction=<0>: DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL
• sync-direction=<1>: DMA_TO_DEVICE
• sync-direction=<2>: DMA_FROM_DEVICE

The sync-direction property is optional. When the sync-direction property is not specified, sync-direction is set to <0>.

		udmabuf@0x00 {
			compatible = "ikwzm,udmabuf-0.10.a";
			size = <0x00100000>;
			sync-offset = <0x00010000>;
			sync-size = <0x000F0000>;
			sync-direction = <2>;
		};

Details on cache management will be described in the next section.

If the dma-coherent property is specified, indicates that coherency between DMA buffer and CPU cache can be guaranteed by hardware.

The dma-coherent property is optional. When the dma-coherent property is not specified, indicates that coherency between DMA buffer and CPU cache can not be guaranteed by hardware.

		udmabuf@0x00 {
			compatible = "ikwzm,udmabuf-0.10.a";
			size = <0x00100000>;
			dma-coherent;
		};

Details on cache management will be described in the next section.

Linux can specify the reserved memory area in the device tree. The Linux kernel excludes normal memory allocation from the physical memory space specified by reserved-memory property. In order to access this reserved memory area, it is nessasary to use a general-purpose memory access driver such as /dev/mem, or associate it with the device driver in the device tree.

By the memory-region property, it can be associated the reserved memory area with udmabuf.

	reserved-memory {
		#address-cells = <1>;
		#size-cells = <1>;
		ranges;
		image_buf0: image_buf@0 {
			compatible = "shared-dma-pool";
			reusable;
			reg = <0x3C000000 0x04000000>; 
			label = "image_buf0";
		};
	};
	udmabuf@0 {
		compatible = "ikwzm,udmabuf-0.10.a";
		device-name = "udmabuf0";
		size = <0x04000000>; // 64MiB
		memory-region = <&image_buf0>;
	};

In this example, 64MiB of 0x3C000000 to 0x3FFFFFFF is reserved as "image_buf0". In this "image_buf0", specify "shared-dma-pool" in compatible property and specify the reusable property. By specifying these properties, this reserved memory area will be allocated by the CMA. Also, you need to be careful about address and size alignment.

The above "image_buf0" is associated with "udmabuf@0" with memory-region property. With this association, "udmabuf@0" reserves physical memory from the CMA area specifed by "image_buf0".

The memory-region property is optional. When the memory-region property is not specified, udmabuf allocates the DMA buffer from the CMA area allocated to the Linux kernel.

When udmabuf is loaded into the kernel, the following device files are created. <device-name> is a placeholder for the device name described in the previous section.

• /dev/<device-name>
• /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/phys_addr
• /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/size
• /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_mode
• /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_offset
• /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_size
• /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_direction
• /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_owner
• /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_for_cpu
• /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_for_device
• /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/dma_coherent

/dev/<device-name> is used when mmap()-ed to the user space or accessed via read()/write().

    if ((fd  = open("/dev/udmabuf0", O_RDWR)) != -1) {
        buf = mmap(NULL, buf_size, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0);
        /* Do some read/write access to buf */
        close(fd);
    }

The device file can be directly read/written by specifying the device as the target of dd in the shell.

zynq$ dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/udmabuf0 bs=4096 count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
4194304 bytes (4.2 MB) copied, 3.07516 s, 1.4 MB/s

zynq$dd if=/dev/udmabuf4 of=random.bin
8192+0 records in
8192+0 records out
4194304 bytes (4.2 MB) copied, 0.173866 s, 24.1 MB/s

The physical address of a DMA buffer can be retrieved by reading /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/phys_addr.

    unsigned char  attr[1024];
    unsigned long  phys_addr;
    if ((fd  = open("/sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/phys_addr", O_RDONLY)) != -1) {
        read(fd, attr, 1024);
        sscanf(attr, "%x", &phys_addr);
        close(fd);
    }

The size of a DMA buffer can be retrieved by reading /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/size.

    unsigned char  attr[1024];
    unsigned int   buf_size;
    if ((fd  = open("/sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/size", O_RDONLY)) != -1) {
        read(fd, attr, 1024);
        sscanf(attr, "%d", &buf_size);
        close(fd);
    }

The device file /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_mode is used to configure the behavior when udmabuf is opened with the O_SYNC flag.

    unsigned char  attr[1024];
    unsigned long  sync_mode = 2;
    if ((fd  = open("/sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/sync_mode", O_WRONLY)) != -1) {
        sprintf(attr, "%d", sync_mode);
        write(fd, attr, strlen(attr));
        close(fd);
    }

Details on O_SYNC and cache management will be described in the next section.

The device file /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_offset is used to specify the start address of a memory block of which cache is manually managed.

    unsigned char  attr[1024];
    unsigned long  sync_offset = 0x00000000;
    if ((fd  = open("/sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/sync_offset", O_WRONLY)) != -1) {
        sprintf(attr, "%d", sync_offset); /* or sprintf(attr, "0x%x", sync_offset); */
        write(fd, attr, strlen(attr));
        close(fd);
    }

Details of manual cache management is described in the next section.

The device file /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_size is used to specify the size of a memory block of which cache is manually managed.

    unsigned char  attr[1024];
    unsigned long  sync_size = 1024;
    if ((fd  = open("/sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/sync_size", O_WRONLY)) != -1) {
        sprintf(attr, "%d", sync_size); /* or sprintf(attr, "0x%x", sync_size); */
        write(fd, attr, strlen(attr));
        close(fd);
    }

Details of manual cache management is described in the next section.

The device file /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_direction is used to set the direction of DMA transfer to/from the DMA buffer of which cache is manually managed.

• 0: sets DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL
• 1: sets DMA_TO_DEVICE
• 2: sets DMA_FROM_DEVICE

    unsigned char  attr[1024];
    unsigned long  sync_direction = 1;
    if ((fd  = open("/sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/sync_direction", O_WRONLY)) != -1) {
        sprintf(attr, "%d", sync_direction);
        write(fd, attr, strlen(attr));
        close(fd);
    }

Details of manual cache management is described in the next section.

The device file /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/dma_coherent can read whether the coherency of DMA buffer and CPU cache can be guaranteed by hardware. It is able to specify whether or not it is able to guarantee by hardware with the dma-coherent property in the device tree, but this device file is read-only.

If this value is 1, the coherency of DMA buffer and CPU cache can be guaranteed by hardware. If this value is 0, the coherency of DMA buffer and CPU cache can be not guaranteed by hardware.

    unsigned char  attr[1024];
    int dma_coherent;
    if ((fd  = open("/sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/dma_coherent", O_RDONLY)) != -1) {
        read(fd, attr, 1024);
        sscanf(attr, "%x", &dma_coherent);
        close(fd);
    }

The device file /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_owner reports the owner of the memory block in the manual cache management mode.

    unsigned char  attr[1024];
    int sync_owner;
    if ((fd  = open("/sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/sync_owner", O_RDONLY)) != -1) {
        read(fd, attr, 1024);
        sscanf(attr, "%x", &sync_owner);
        close(fd);
    }

Details of manual cache management is described in the next section.

In the manual cache management mode, CPU can be the owner of the buffer by writing non-zero to the device file /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_for_cpu.

If '1' is written to device file, if sync_direction is 2(=DMA_FROM_DEVICE) or 0(=DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL), the write to the device file invalidates a cache specified by sync_offset and sync_size.

    unsigned char  attr[1024];
    unsigned long  sync_for_cpu = 1;
    if ((fd  = open("/sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/sync_for_cpu", O_WRONLY)) != -1) {
        sprintf(attr, "%d", sync_for_cpu);
        write(fd, attr, strlen(attr));
        close(fd);
    }

The value written to this device file can include sync_offset, sync_size, and sync_direction.

    unsigned char  attr[1024];
    unsigned long  sync_offset    = 0;
    unsigned long  sync_size      = 0x10000;
    unsigned int   sync_direction = 1;
    unsigned long  sync_for_cpu   = 1;
    if ((fd  = open("/sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/sync_for_cpu", O_WRONLY)) != -1) {
        sprintf(attr, "0x%08X%08X", (sync_offset & 0xFFFFFFFF), (sync_size & 0xFFFFFFF0) | (sync_direction << 2) | sync_for_cpu);
        write(fd, attr, strlen(attr));
        close(fd);
    }

The sync_offset/sync_size/sync_direction specified by sync_for_cpu is temporary and does not affect the sync_offset or sync_size or sync_direction device files.

Details of manual cache management is described in the next section.

In the manual cache management mode, DEVICE can be the owner of the buffer by writing non-zero to the device file /sys/class/udmabuf/<device-name>/sync_for_device.

If '1' is written to device file, if sync_direction is 1(=DMA_TO_DEVICE) or 0(=DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL), the write to the device file flushes a cache specified by sync_offset and sync_size (i.e. the cached data, if any, will be updated with data on DDR memory).

    unsigned char  attr[1024];
    unsigned long  sync_for_device = 1;
    if ((fd  = open("/sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/sync_for_device", O_WRONLY)) != -1) {
        sprintf(attr, "%d", sync_for_device);
        write(fd, attr, strlen(attr));
        close(fd);
    }

The value written to this device file can include sync_offset, sync_size, and sync_direction.

    unsigned char  attr[1024];
    unsigned long  sync_offset     = 0;
    unsigned long  sync_size       = 0x10000;
    unsigned int   sync_direction  = 1;
    unsigned long  sync_for_device = 1;
    if ((fd  = open("/sys/class/udmabuf/udmabuf0/sync_for_device", O_WRONLY)) != -1) {
        sprintf(attr, "0x%08X%08X", (sync_offset & 0xFFFFFFFF), (sync_size & 0xFFFFFFF0) | (sync_direction << 2) | sync_for_device);
        write(fd, attr, strlen(attr));
        close(fd);
    }

The sync_offset/sync_size/sync_direction specified by sync_for_device is temporary and does not affect the sync_offset or sync_size or sync_direction device files.

Details of manual cache management is described in the next section.

CPU usually accesses to a DMA buffer on the main memory using cache, and a hardware accelerator logic accesses to data stored in the DMA buffer on the main memory. In this situation, coherency between data stored on CPU cache and them on the main memory should be considered carefully.

When hardware assures the coherency, CPU cache can be turned on without additional treatment. For example, ZYNQ provides ACP (Accelerator Coherency Port), and the coherency is maintained by hardware as long as the accelerator accesses to the main memory via this port.

In this case, accesses from CPU to the main memory can be fast by using CPU cache as usual. To enable CPU cache on the DMA buffer allocated by udmabuf, open udmabuf without specifying the O_SYNC flag.

    /* To enable CPU cache on the DMA buffer, */
    /* open udmabuf without specifying the `O_SYNC` flag. */
    if ((fd  = open("/dev/udmabuf0", O_RDWR)) != -1) {
        buf = mmap(NULL, buf_size, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0);
        /* Read/write access to the buffer */
        close(fd);
    }

The manual management of cache, described in the following section, will not be necessary when hardware maintains the coherency.

If the dma-coherent property is specified in the device tree, specify that coherency can be guaranteed with hardware. In this case, the cache control described in "2. Manual cache management with the CPU canche still being enabled" described later is not performed.

To maintain coherency of data between CPU and the main memory, another coherency mechanism is necessary. udmabuf supports two different ways of coherency maintenance; one is to disable CPU cache, and the other is to involve manual cache flush/invalidation with CPU cache being enabled.

To disable CPU cache of allocated DMA buffer, specify the O_SYNC flag when opening udmabuf.

    /* To disable CPU cache on the DMA buffer, */
    /* open udmabuf with the `O_SYNC` flag. */
    if ((fd  = open("/dev/udmabuf0", O_RDWR | O_SYNC)) != -1) {
        buf = mmap(NULL, buf_size, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0);
        /* Read/write access to the buffer */
        close(fd);
    }

As listed below, sync_mode can be used to configure the cache behavior when the O_SYNC flag is present in open():

• sync_mode=0: CPU cache is enabled regardless of the O_SYNC flag presense.
• sync_mode=1: If O_SYNC is specified, CPU cache is disabled. If O_SYNC is not specified, CPU cache is enabled.
• sync_mode=2: If O_SYNC is specified, CPU cache is disabled but CPU uses write-combine when writing data to DMA buffer improves performance by combining multiple write accesses. If O_SYNC is not specified, CPU cache is enabled.
• sync_mode=3: If O_SYNC is specified, DMA coherency mode is used. If O_SYNC is not specified, CPU cache is enabled.
• sync_mode=4: CPU cache is enabled regardless of the O_SYNC flag presense.
• sync_mode=5: CPU cache is disabled regardless of the O_SYNC flag presense.
• sync_mode=6: CPU uses write-combine to write data to DMA buffer regardless of O_SYNC presence.
• sync_mode=7: DMA coherency mode is used regardless of O_SYNC presence.

As a practical example, the execution times of a sample program listed below were measured under several test conditions as presented in the table.

int check_buf(unsigned char* buf, unsigned int size)
{
    int m = 256;
    int n = 10;
    int i, k;
    int error_count = 0;
    while(--n > 0) {
      for(i = 0; i < size; i = i + m) {
        m = (i+256 < size) ? 256 : (size-i);
        for(k = 0; k < m; k++) {
          buf[i+k] = (k & 0xFF);
        }
        for(k = 0; k < m; k++) {
          if (buf[i+k] != (k & 0xFF)) {
            error_count++;
          }
        }
      }
    }
    return error_count;
}
int clear_buf(unsigned char* buf, unsigned int size)
{
    int n = 100;
    int error_count = 0;
    while(--n > 0) {
      memset((void*)buf, 0, size);
    }
    return error_count;
}

Table-1　The execution time of the sample program checkbuf

Table-2　The execution time of the sample program clearbuf

As explained above, by opening udmabuf without specifying the O_SYNC flag, CPU cache can be left turned on.

    /* To enable CPU cache on the DMA buffer, */
    /* open udmabuf without specifying the `O_SYNC` flag. */
    if ((fd  = open("/dev/udmabuf0", O_RDWR)) != -1) {
        buf = mmap(NULL, buf_size, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0);
        /* Read/write access to the buffer */
        close(fd);
    }

To manualy manage cache coherency, users need to follow the

1. Specify a memory area shared between CPU and accelerator via sync_offset and sync_size device files. sync_offset accepts an offset from the start address of the allocated buffer in units of bytes. The size of the shared memory area should be set to sync_size in units of bytes.
2. Data transfer direction should be set to sync_direction. If the accelerator performs only read accesses to the memory area, sync_direction should be set to 1(=DMA_TO_DEVICE), and to 2(=DMA_FROM_DEVICE) if only write accesses.
3. If the accelerator reads and writes data from/to the memory area, sync_direction should be set to 0(=DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL).

Following the above configuration, sync_for_cpu and/or sync_for_device should be used to set the owner of the buffer specified by the above-mentioned offset and the size.

When CPU accesses to the buffer, '1' should be written to sync_for_cpu to set CPU as the owner. Upon the write to sync_for_cpu, CPU cache is invalidated if sync_direction is 2(=DMA_FROM_DEVICE) or 0(=DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL). Once CPU is becomes the owner of the buffer, the accelerator cannot access the buffer.

On the other hand, when the accelerator needs to access the buffer, '1' should be written to sync_for_device to change owership of the buffer to the accelerator. Upon the write to sync_for_device, the CPU cache of the specified memory area is flushed using data on the main memory.

However, if the dma-coherent property is specified in the device tree, CPU cache is not invalidated and flushed.

The programming language "Python" provides an extension called "NumPy". This section explains how to do the same operation as "ndarry" by mapping the DMA buffer allocated in the kernel with memmap of "NumPy" with udmabuf.

import numpy as np

class Udmabuf:
    """A simple udmabuf class"""
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name           = name
        self.device_name    = '/dev/%s'               % self.name
        self.class_path     = '/sys/class/udmabuf/%s' % self.name
        self.phys_addr      = self.get_value('phys_addr', 16)
        self.buf_size       = self.get_value('size')
        self.sync_offset    = None
        self.sync_size      = None
        self.sync_direction = None

    def memmap(self, dtype, shape):
        self.item_size = np.dtype(dtype).itemsize
        self.array     = np.memmap(self.device_name, dtype=dtype, mode='r+', shape=shape)
        return self.array

    def get_value(self, name, radix=10):
        value = None
        for line in open(self.class_path + '/' + name):
            value = int(line, radix)
            break
        return value
    def set_value(self, name, value):
        f = open(self.class_path + '/' + name, 'w')
        f.write(str(value))
        f.close

    def set_sync_area(self, direction=None, offset=None, size=None):
        if offset is None:
            self.sync_offset    = self.get_value('sync_offset')
        else:
            self.set_value('sync_offset', offset)
            self.sync_offset    = offset
        if size   is None:
            self.sync_size      = self.get_value('sync_size')
        else:
            self.set_value('sync_size', size)
            self.sync_size      = size
        if direction is None:
            self.sync_direction = self.get_value('sync_direction')
        else:
            self.set_value('sync_direction', direction)
            self.sync_direction = direction

    def set_sync_to_device(self, offset=None, size=None):
        self.set_sync_area(1, offset, size)

    def set_sync_to_cpu(self, offset=None, size=None):
        self.set_sync_area(2, offset, size)

    def set_sync_to_bidirectional(self, offset=None, size=None):
        self.set_sync_area(3, offset, size)

    def sync_for_cpu(self):
        self.set_value('sync_for_cpu', 1)

    def sync_for_device(self):
        self.set_value('sync_for_device', 1)

from udmabuf import Udmabuf
import numpy as np
import time
def test_1(a):
    for i in range (0,9):
        a *= 0
        a += 0x31
if __name__ == '__main__':
    udmabuf      = Udmabuf('udmabuf0')
    test_dtype   = np.uint8
    test_size    = udmabuf.buf_size/(np.dtype(test_dtype).itemsize)
    udmabuf.memmap(dtype=test_dtype, shape=(test_size))
    comparison   = np.zeros(test_size, dtype=test_dtype)
    print ("test_size  : %d" % test_size)
    start        = time.time()
    test_1(udmabuf.mem_map)
    elapsed_time = time.time() - start
    print ("udmabuf0   : elapsed_time:{0}".format(elapsed_time)) + "[sec]"
    start        = time.time()
    test_1(comparison)
    elapsed_time = time.time() - start
    print ("comparison : elapsed_time:{0}".format(elapsed_time)) + "[sec]"
    if np.array_equal(udmabuf.mem_map, comparison):
        print ("udmabuf0 == comparison : OK")
    else:
        print ("udmabuf0 != comparison : NG")

Install udmabuf. In this example, 8MiB DMA buffer is reserved as "udmabuf0".

zynq# insmod udmabuf.ko udmabuf0=8388608
[34654.622746] udmabuf udmabuf0: driver installed
[34654.627153] udmabuf udmabuf0: major number   = 237
[34654.631889] udmabuf udmabuf0: minor number   = 0
[34654.636685] udmabuf udmabuf0: phys address   = 0x1f300000
[34654.642002] udmabuf udmabuf0: buffer size    = 8388608
[34654.642002] udmabuf udmabuf0: dma-coherent   = 0

Executing the script in the previous section gives the following results.

zynq# python udmabuf_test.py
test_size  : 8388608
udmabuf0   : elapsed_time:1.53304982185[sec]
comparison : elapsed_time:1.536673069[sec]
udmabuf0 == comparison : OK

The execution time for "udmabuf0"(buffer area secured in the kernel) and the same operation with ndarray (comparison) were almost the same. That is, it seems that "udmabuf0" is also effective CPU cache.

I confirmed the contents of "udmabuf0" after running this script.

zynq# dd if=/dev/udmabuf0 of=udmabuf0.bin bs=8388608
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
8388608 bytes (8.4 MB) copied, 0.151531 s, 55.4 MB/s
shell# 
shell# od -t x1 udmabuf0.bin
0000000 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31
*
40000000

After executing the script, it was confirmed that the result of the execution remains in the buffer. Just to be sure, let's check that NumPy can read it.

zynq# python
Python 2.7.9 (default, Aug 13 2016, 17:56:53)
[GCC 4.9.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import numpy as np
>>> a = np.memmap('/dev/udmabuf0', dtype=np.uint8, mode='r+', shape=(8388608))
>>> a
memmap([49, 49, 49, ..., 49, 49, 49], dtype=uint8)
>>> a.itemsize
1
>>> a.size
8388608
>>>