This document is a Mac OS X manual page. Manual pages are a command-line technology for providing documentation. You can view these manual pages locally using the man(1) command. These manual pages come from many different sources, and thus, have a variety of writing styles.

For more information about the manual page format, see the manual page for manpages(5).

CACHE(3)                 BSD Library Functions Manual                 CACHE(3)

NAME
     sys_cache_control, sys_icache_invalidate, sys_dcache_flush -- cache control

LIBRARY
     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
     #include <libkern/OSCacheControl.h>

     int
     sys_cache_control(int function, void *start, size_t len);

     void
     sys_icache_invalidate(void *start, size_t len);

     void
     sys_dcache_flush(void *start, size_t len);

DESCRIPTION
     These functions operate on every cache line containing one of the len bytes of memory pointed to by
     start.  Normally the operations apply to every processor in the system, but the exact semantics of
     these operations is platform dependent.  They should be used with caution.

     sys_cache_control() performs the operation specified by function.  Refer to the header file for a list
     of currently supported functions.

     sys_icache_invalidate() prepares memory for execution, typically by invalidating the instruction cache
     for the indicated range.  This should be called after writing machine instructions to memory, and
     before executing them.  On IA32 processors this function is a NOP, because their instruction caches are
     coherent.

     sys_dcache_flush() writes modified data cache lines to main memory, and then invalidates all lines in
     the range being operated on.  It can be useful when dealing with cache incoherent devices or DMA.

RETURN VALUES
     sys_cache_control() returns zero on success, ENOTSUP if function is not valid.

SEE ALSO
     atomic(3), barrier(3)

HISTORY
     These functions first appeared in Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard).

Darwin                        September 21, 2006                        Darwin