From owner-freebsd-smp Sun Mar 31 10:41:43 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-smp@freebsd.org Received: from wall.polstra.com (wall-gw.polstra.com [206.213.73.130]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F09AF37B419 for ; Sun, 31 Mar 2002 10:41:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from vashon.polstra.com (vashon.polstra.com [206.213.73.13]) by wall.polstra.com (8.11.3/8.11.3) with ESMTP id g2VIfco96543; Sun, 31 Mar 2002 10:41:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jdp@wall.polstra.com) Received: (from jdp@localhost) by vashon.polstra.com (8.11.6/8.11.0) id g2VIfcn18637; Sun, 31 Mar 2002 10:41:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jdp) Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 10:41:38 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200203311841.g2VIfcn18637@vashon.polstra.com> To: smp@freebsd.org From: John Polstra Cc: dillon@apollo.backplane.com Subject: Re: RE: Syscall contention tests return, userret() bugs/issues. In-Reply-To: <200203311834.g2VIYrt89705@apollo.backplane.com> References: <200203311809.g2VI90H89605@apollo.backplane.com> <200203311817.g2VIHEB18544@vashon.polstra.com> <200203311834.g2VIYrt89705@apollo.backplane.com> Organization: Polstra & Co., Seattle, WA Sender: owner-freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org In article <200203311834.g2VIYrt89705@apollo.backplane.com>, Matthew Dillon wrote: > > Now we are quibbling over terminology. Intel caches have a write FIFO. > They are not a full-blown delayed-write caches. There is a BIG > difference. That is, you can't have an arbitrary amount of dirty data > sitting in an intel cache. There is nothing in the Intel documentation which would support that statement. The cache is write-back. Nowhere does the documentation say anything about dirty lines being flushed to memory except when required by the cache control protocol (which is pretty standard). > This means that a write will be pushed out to main memory in fairly > short order. No, I don't think so. There is no evidence of that in the Intel docs. John -- John Polstra John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA "Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence." -- Chögyam Trungpa To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message