MTRR (Memory Type Range Register) control
-3 Jun 1999
-Richard Gooch
-<rgooch@atnf.csiro.au>
+
+Richard Gooch <rgooch@atnf.csiro.au> - 3 Jun 1999
+Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@do-not-panic.com> - April 9, 2015
+
+===============================================================================
+Phasing out MTRR use
+
+MTRR use is replaced on modern x86 hardware with PAT. Direct MTRR use by
+drivers on Linux is now completely phased out, device drivers should use
+arch_phys_wc_add() in combination with ioremap_wc() to make MTRR effective on
+non-PAT systems while a no-op but equally effective on PAT enabled systems.
+
+Even if Linux does not use MTRRs directly, some x86 platform firmware may still
+set up MTRRs early before booting the OS. They do this as some platform
+firmware may still have implemented access to MTRRs which would be controlled
+and handled by the platform firmware directly. An example of platform use of
+MTRRs is through the use of SMI handlers, one case could be for fan control,
+the platform code would need uncachable access to some of its fan control
+registers. Such platform access does not need any Operating System MTRR code in
+place other than mtrr_type_lookup() to ensure any OS specific mapping requests
+are aligned with platform MTRR setup. If MTRRs are only set up by the platform
+firmware code though and the OS does not make any specific MTRR mapping
+requests mtrr_type_lookup() should always return MTRR_TYPE_INVALID.
+
+For details refer to Documentation/x86/pat.txt.
+
+===============================================================================
On Intel P6 family processors (Pentium Pro, Pentium II and later)
the Memory Type Range Registers (MTRRs) may be used to control
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