2.6.26-rc1

 Documentation

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+         DMA attributes
+         ==============
+
+This document describes the semantics of the DMA attributes that are
+defined in linux/dma-attrs.h.
+
+DMA_ATTR_WRITE_BARRIER
+----------------------
+
+DMA_ATTR_WRITE_BARRIER is a (write) barrier attribute for DMA.  DMA
+to a memory region with the DMA_ATTR_WRITE_BARRIER attribute forces
+all pending DMA writes to complete, and thus provides a mechanism to
+strictly order DMA from a device across all intervening busses and
+bridges.  This barrier is not specific to a particular type of
+interconnect, it applies to the system as a whole, and so its
+implementation must account for the idiosyncracies of the system all
+the way from the DMA device to memory.
+
+As an example of a situation where DMA_ATTR_WRITE_BARRIER would be
+useful, suppose that a device does a DMA write to indicate that data is
+ready and available in memory.  The DMA of the "completion indication"
+could race with data DMA.  Mapping the memory used for completion
+indications with DMA_ATTR_WRITE_BARRIER would prevent the race.
+