Linux Device Drivers, Second Edition

Chapter 13. mmap and DMA

This chapter delves into the area of Linux memory management, with an emphasis on techniques that are useful to the device driver writer. The material in this chapter is somewhat advanced, and not everybody will need a grasp of it. Nonetheless, many tasks can only be done through digging more deeply into the memory management subsystem; it also provides an interesting look into how an important part of the kernel works.

The material in this chapter is divided into three sections. The first covers the implementation of the mmap system call, which allows the mapping of device memory directly into a user process’s address space. We then cover the kernel kiobuf mechanism, which provides direct access to user memory from kernel space. The kiobuf system may be used to implement “raw I/O” for certain kinds of devices. The final section covers direct memory access (DMA) I/O operations, which essentially provide peripherals with direct access to system memory.

Of course, all of these techniques require an understanding of how Linux memory management works, so we start with an overview of that subsystem.

Memory Management in Linux

Rather than describing the theory of memory management in operating systems, this section tries to pinpoint the main features of the Linux implementation of the theory. Although you do not need to be a Linux virtual memory guru to implement mmap, a basic overview of how things work is useful. What follows is a fairly lengthy description ...