xref: /openbmc/u-boot/doc/README.arm-caches (revision 743d7592)
1Disabling I-cache:
2- Set CONFIG_SYS_ICACHE_OFF
3
4Disabling D-cache:
5- Set CONFIG_SYS_DCACHE_OFF
6
7Enabling I-cache:
8- Make sure CONFIG_SYS_ICACHE_OFF is not set and call icache_enable().
9
10Enabling D-cache:
11- Make sure CONFIG_SYS_DCACHE_OFF is not set and call dcache_enable().
12
13Enabling Caches at System Startup:
14- Implement enable_caches() for your platform and enable the I-cache and
15  D-cache from this function. This function is called immediately
16  after relocation.
17
18Guidelines for Working with D-cache:
19
20Memory to Peripheral DMA:
21- Flush the buffer after the MPU writes the data and before the DMA is
22  initiated.
23
24Peripheral to Memory DMA:
25- Invalidate the buffer before starting the DMA. In case there are any dirty
26  lines from the DMA buffer in the cache, subsequent cache-line replacements
27  may corrupt the buffer in memory while the DMA is still going on. Cache-line
28  replacement can happen if the CPU tries to bring some other memory locations
29  into the cache while the DMA is going on.
30- Invalidate the buffer after the DMA is complete and before the MPU reads
31  it. This may be needed in addition to the invalidation before the DMA
32  mentioned above, because in some processors memory contents can spontaneously
33  come to the cache due to speculative memory access by the CPU. If this
34  happens with the DMA buffer while DMA is going on we have a coherency problem.
35
36Buffer Requirements:
37- Any buffer that is invalidated(that is, typically the peripheral to
38  memory DMA buffer) should be aligned to cache-line boundary both at
39  at the beginning and at the end of the buffer.
40- If the buffer is not cache-line aligned invalidation will be restricted
41  to the aligned part. That is, one cache-line at the respective boundary
42  may be left out while doing invalidation.
43- A suitable buffer can be alloced on the stack using the
44  ALLOC_CACHE_ALIGN_BUFFER macro.
45
46Cleanup Before Linux:
47- cleanup_before_linux() should flush the D-cache, invalidate I-cache, and
48  disable MMU and caches.
49- The following sequence is advisable while disabling d-cache:
50  1. dcache_disable() - flushes and disables d-cache
51  2. invalidate_dcache_all() - invalid any entry that came to the cache
52	in the short period after the cache was flushed but before the
53	cache got disabled.
54