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cubelinux-kernel/Documentation/driver-api/cxl/linux/dax-driver.rst
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Greg Kroah-Hartman 598cf27219 Linux 6.19.3
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20260217200002.683975158@linuxfoundation.org
Tested-by: Florian Fainelli <florian.fainelli@broadcom.com>
Tested-by: Takeshi Ogasawara <takeshi.ogasawara@futuring-girl.com>
Tested-by: Peter Schneider <pschneider1968@googlemail.com>
Tested-by: Jon Hunter <jonathanh@nvidia.com>
Tested-by: Salvatore Bonaccorso <carnil@debian.org>
Tested-by: Brett A C Sheffield <bacs@librecast.net>
Tested-by: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
Tested-by: Luna Jernberg <droidbittin@gmail.com>
Tested-by: Ronald Warsow <rwarsow@gmx.de>
Tested-by: Justin M. Forbes <jforbes@fedoraproject.org>
Tested-by: Ron Economos <re@w6rz.net>
Tested-by: Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
2026-02-19 16:33:27 +01:00

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.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
====================
DAX Driver Operation
====================
The `Direct Access Device` driver was originally designed to provide a
memory-like access mechanism to memory-like block-devices. It was
extended to support CXL Memory Devices, which provide user-configured
memory devices.
The CXL subsystem depends on the DAX subsystem to either:
- Generate a file-like interface to userland via :code:`/dev/daxN.Y`, or
- Engage the memory-hotplug interface to add CXL memory to page allocator.
The DAX subsystem exposes this ability through the `cxl_dax_region` driver.
A `dax_region` provides the translation between a CXL `memory_region` and
a `DAX Device`.
DAX Device
==========
A `DAX Device` is a file-like interface exposed in :code:`/dev/daxN.Y`. A
memory region exposed via dax device can be accessed via userland software
via the :code:`mmap()` system-call. The result is direct mappings to the
CXL capacity in the task's page tables.
Users wishing to manually handle allocation of CXL memory should use this
interface.
kmem conversion
===============
The :code:`dax_kmem` driver converts a `DAX Device` into a series of `hotplug
memory blocks` managed by :code:`kernel/memory-hotplug.c`. This capacity
will be exposed to the kernel page allocator in the user-selected memory
zone.
The :code:`memmap_on_memory` setting (both global and DAX device local)
dictates where the kernell will allocate the :code:`struct folio` descriptors
for this memory will come from. If :code:`memmap_on_memory` is set, memory
hotplug will set aside a portion of the memory block capacity to allocate
folios. If unset, the memory is allocated via a normal :code:`GFP_KERNEL`
allocation - and as a result will most likely land on the local NUM node of the
CPU executing the hotplug operation.