Re: [RFC] x86: mtrr: Constrain WB MTRR to max phys mem prior to cleanup

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Fri Sep 28 2012 - 23:16:43 EST


On 09/28/2012 10:37 AM, Peter Hurley wrote:
>
> An interesting side note: more recent revisions of this BIOS (rev. A11)
> report one less variable MTRR (so, IA32_MTRRCAP is writable?)
>
>>> However, the right way to fix that is to use the PAT interfaces, which
>>> doesn't have this drawback -- then MTRR cleanup becomes entirely
>>> superfluous and the problem goes away.
>> Do you mean disable MTRR totally here?
>
> Well, since PAT entries marked WC override all MTRR settings, whatever
> the BIOS set the variable MTRRs to becomes irrelevant, so not disabled
> but rather ignored.
>

The whole point is that the display stuff should not use MTRR, but
rather use PAT to provide WC. Then we don't need to "clean up" the
BIOS-set MTRRs.

-hpa

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