In the early days of computing, everything ran quite a bit slower than what we see today. This was not only because the computers' central processing units – CPUs – were slow, but also because ...

Recently, the DMA-BUF heaps interface was added to the 5.6 kernel. This interface is similar to ION, which has been used for years by Android vendors. However, in trying to move vendors to use DMA-BUF ...

The year so far has been filled with news of Spectre and Meltdown. These exploits take advantage of features like speculative execution, and memory access timing. What they have in common is the fact ...

With the introduction of the solid-state Flash drive, performance came to the forefront for data storage technologies. Prior to that, software developers and server administrators needed to devise ...

Part 1 of this series, covered some background on ION, DMA-BUF heaps, the DMA API, and the concept of "ownership" when it comes to handling CPU-cache maintenance, finally ending on a conventional DMA ...