Hi Chris!

> > I have a question about "what if physical memory is fragmented"?
> > The AGIPIOC_ALLOC call returns a 'physical' address.
> > This implies that the ALLOC is a single contiguous chunk of physical
> > memory. Right?
> > 
> > However, I cant imagine that it is easy to guarantee 64 megs of contiguous
> > physical RAM allocation. So something seems wrong with my assumption.
> 
> AGP memory is not allocated contiguously (check the calls to agp_bridge.
> agp_alloc_page in agp_allocate_memory).
> 
> However, it does look like AGPIOC_ALLOCATE is broken.  It only returns
> the ->physical field of the resulting agp_memory structure.  It doesn't
> even look like this field is set for any chipsets other than the i810
> and i830.

That's because it's not necessary. The user can only get the physical
pointer if he/she does an ALLOC with type > 0 which is a chip specific ALLOC
and it is up to the driver to implement these types or not.

> Is /dev/agpgart even supposed to work on Linux?  I don't think any
> programs use it, and the rest of the kernel used the backend interfaces
> directly.  It's possible that the frontend has fallen out of sync with
> the back.  Can anyone here confirm or refute this?

Of course it's used. It essential for some X drivers such as i8xx series
chips. There is nothing wrong with the frontend either.

-- 

Regards
 Abraham

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for
these only gave life, those the art of living well.
                -- Aristotle

__________________________________________________________
 Abraham vd Merwe - 2d3D, Inc.

 Device Driver Development, Outsourcing, Embedded Systems

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