[U-Boot] JFFS2 + cache coherency
Renaud barbier
renaud.barbier at ge.com
Tue Jun 2 21:22:50 CEST 2009
My system is based on MPc8544.
I am loading a small standalone program (2KB) from the JFFS2 partition
(NOR flash)
My program crashes while it does not crash if loaded from a tftp server.
After investifgation using Codewarrior I noticed that there is a difference
between the memory and Dcache content.
Some number of words (8 = cache line)) are all zero in Dcache. Hence
when jumping the program crashes
as I guess the instruction cache is picking the instructions from the
Dcache.
When the program is loaded from a tftp server both the cache (in
copyback mode) and DDR
are set with the same data and therefore the program works.
When loaded from a JFFS2 partition, the data are loaded to inode buffer
(flash to memory with cache inhibited)
in memory and then (mem)copied to the destination address (memory to
memory). (Hope I got this right).
This is why the cache/memory is not in sync.
The problem does not exist when the cache is write-through.
Also the Freescale documentation on cache cohenrency specifies that
software should make sure
that the cache/memory are synchronized before jumping to a new location.
Hence, I think the cache should be flushed in or after do_jffs2_fsload.
A call to flush_dcache(); fixes the problem.
Let me know if you think I am right regarding this issue.
cheers,
Renaud
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