Solaris architecture specific (Solaris DDI).

ptr

any valid 32- or 64-bit pointer

flag

determines whether caller can sleep for memory (see kmem_alloc(9F) for a description)

These routines were originally developed so that device drivers could manage 64-bit pointers on devices that save space only for 32-bit pointers.

Many device drivers need to pass a 32-bit value to the hardware when attempting I/O. Later, when that I/O completes, the only way the driver has to identify the request that generated that I/O is via a "token". When the I/O is initiated, the driver passes this token to the hardware. When the I/O completes the hardware passes back this 32-bit token.

Before Solaris supported 64-bit pointers, device drivers just passed a raw 32-bit pointer to the hardware. When pointers grew to be 64 bits this was no longer possible. The id32_*() routines were created to help drivers translate between 64-bit pointers and a 32-bit token.

Given a 32- or 64-bit pointer, the routine id32_alloc() allocates a 32-bit token, returning 0 if KM_NOSLEEP was specified and memory could not be allocated. The allocated token is passed back to id32_lookup() to obtain the original 32- or 64-bit pointer.

The routine id32_free() is used to free an allocated token. Once id32_free() is called, the supplied token is no longer valid.

Note that these routines have some degree of error checking. This is done so that an invalid token passed to id32_lookup() will not be accepted as valid. When id32_lookup() detects an invalid token it returns NULL. Calling routines should check for this return value so that they do not try to dereference a NULL pointer.

These functions can be called from user or interrupt context. The routine id32_alloc() should not be called from interrupt context when the KM_SLEEP flag is passed in. All other routines can be called from interrupt or kernel context.

kmem_alloc(9F)

Writing Device Drivers