Merge branch 'master' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6

1 files changed, 24 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/x86/pat.txt b/Documentation/x86/pat.txt
index c93ff5f4c0dd..cf08c9fff3cd 100644
--- a/Documentation/x86/pat.txt
+++ b/Documentation/x86/pat.txt
@@ -80,6 +80,30 @@ pci proc               |    --    |    --      |       WC         |
                        |          |            |                  |
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
 
+Advanced APIs for drivers
+-------------------------
+A. Exporting pages to users with remap_pfn_range, io_remap_pfn_range,
+vm_insert_pfn
+
+Drivers wanting to export some pages to userspace do it by using mmap
+interface and a combination of
+1) pgprot_noncached()
+2) io_remap_pfn_range() or remap_pfn_range() or vm_insert_pfn()
+
+With PAT support, a new API pgprot_writecombine is being added. So, drivers can
+continue to use the above sequence, with either pgprot_noncached() or
+pgprot_writecombine() in step 1, followed by step 2.
+
+In addition, step 2 internally tracks the region as UC or WC in memtype
+list in order to ensure no conflicting mapping.
+
+Note that this set of APIs only works with IO (non RAM) regions. If driver
+wants to export a RAM region, it has to do set_memory_uc() or set_memory_wc()
+as step 0 above and also track the usage of those pages and use set_memory_wb()
+before the page is freed to free pool.
+
+
+
 Notes:
 
 -- in the above table mean "Not suggested usage for the API". Some of the --'s