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KA48 / VAXstation VLC cache question



Hi,

For ages I've thought that my VAXstation VLC has been much slower than I thought it rightly should be. It seems only slightly faster than benchmark results show an 11/780 to be even though DEC's documentation says it should be five to six times faster.

While putting some test code in sys/arch/vax/vax/ka48.c, though, I see that the 6K of cache is never enabled. Wow! So that's why these machines are so pokey with NetBSD!

Looking in the KA-660 CPU Module Technical Manual, it seems that enabling the cache is straightforward: enable and flush the cache. I'm not sure why the procedure which is currently in ka48.c appears more complicated - from what I can tell, but I could be wrong, it seems to expect the cache to be mapped to memory locations and clears the cache that way. Since the code makes reference to PARCTL which is part of the CMCTL controller which isn't in the VLC, I don't see why that's in ka48_cache_enable. The KA660 manual says to memory map the cache one needs to do a mtpr(1, 37), and I don't see that anywhere.

It seems that ka48.c and ka48.h have many errors, so I'm trying to forget what I see there and instead am going from the KA660 manual. The CCR is IPR 37 (decimal) and bit 4 should always be one. mfpr(37) gives 16. So I assume that mtpr(4, 37), then mtpr(2, 37) is performed, the cache should be enabled:

"When Enable Cache is set the cache should be flushed by writing a one to the Flush Cache bit. Enable Cache is cleared when RESET_L is asserted."

This is suggesting that once the Enable Cache bit is set, then the cache flush should be performed. However, after doing this, mfpr(37) still gives 16. Hmmm...

Any thoughts, anyone? How do we enable the cache on the KA48?

Thanks,
John


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