On 2012-09-05 12:53, Avi Kivity wrote:
> On 09/05/2012 01:36 PM, Jan Kiszka wrote:
>>>
>>> My current preference is MemoryRegionOps::ref(MemoryRegion *mr) (and a
>>> corresponding unref), which has the following requirements:
>>>
>>> - if the refcount is nonzero, MemoryRegion::opaque is safe to use
>>> - if the refcount is nonzero, the MemoryRegion itself is stable.
>>
>> The second point means that the memory subsystem will cache the region
>> state and apply changes only after leaving a handler that performed them?
>
> No. I/O callbacks may be called after a region has been disabled.
>
> I guess we can restrict this to converted regions, so we don't introduce
> regressions.
s/can/have to/. This property change will require some special care,
hopefully mostly at the memory layer. A simple scenario from recent patches:
if (<enable>) {
memory_region_set_address(&s->pm_io, pm_io_base);
memory_region_set_enabled(&s->pm_io, true);
} else {
memory_region_set_enabled(&s->pm_io, false);
}
We will have to ensure that set_enabled(..., true) will never cause a
dispatch using an outdated base address.
I think discussing semantics and usage patterns of the new memory API -
outside of the BQL - will be the next big topic. ;)
Jan
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