On Tue, 4 Sep 2018 11:00:19 -0400 Jerome Glisse <jglisse@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mon, Sep 03, 2018 at 08:51:57AM +0800, Kenneth Lee wrote: > > From: Kenneth Lee <liguozhu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > > > WarpDrive is an accelerator framework to expose the hardware capabilities > > directly to the user space. It makes use of the exist vfio and vfio-mdev > > facilities. So the user application can send request and DMA to the > > hardware without interaction with the kernel. This removes the latency > > of syscall. > > > > WarpDrive is the name for the whole framework. The component in kernel > > is called SDMDEV, Share Domain Mediated Device. Driver driver exposes its > > hardware resource by registering to SDMDEV as a VFIO-Mdev. So the user > > library of WarpDrive can access it via VFIO interface. > > > > The patchset contains document for the detail. Please refer to it for more > > information. > > > > This patchset is intended to be used with Jean Philippe Brucker's SVA > > patch [1], which enables not only IO side page fault, but also PASID > > support to IOMMU and VFIO. > > > > With these features, WarpDrive can support non-pinned memory and > > multi-process in the same accelerator device. We tested it in our SoC > > integrated Accelerator (board ID: D06, Chip ID: HIP08). A reference work > > tree can be found here: [2]. > > > > But it is not mandatory. This patchset is tested in the latest mainline > > kernel without the SVA patches. So it supports only one process for each > > accelerator. > > > > We have noticed the IOMMU aware mdev RFC announced recently [3]. > > > > The IOMMU aware mdev has similar idea but different intention comparing to > > WarpDrive. It intends to dedicate part of the hardware resource to a VM. > > And the design is supposed to be used with Scalable I/O Virtualization. > > While sdmdev is intended to share the hardware resource with a big amount > > of processes. It just requires the hardware supporting address > > translation per process (PCIE's PASID or ARM SMMU's substream ID). > > > > But we don't see serious confliction on both design. We believe they can be > > normalized as one. > > > > So once again i do not understand why you are trying to do things > this way. Kernel already have tons of example of everything you > want to do without a new framework. Moreover i believe you are > confuse by VFIO. To me VFIO is for VM not to create general device > driver frame work. VFIO is a userspace driver framework, the VM use case just happens to be a rather prolific one. VFIO was never intended to be solely a VM device interface and has several other userspace users, notably DPDK and SPDK, an NVMe backend in QEMU, a userspace NVMe driver, a ruby wrapper, and perhaps others that I'm not aware of. Whether vfio is appropriate interface here might certainly still be a debatable topic, but I would strongly disagree with your last sentence above. Thanks, Alex > So here is your use case as i understand it. You have a device > with a limited number of command queues (can be just one) and in > some case it can support SVA/SVM (when hardware support it and it > is not disabled). Final requirement is being able to schedule cmds > from userspace without ioctl. All of this exists already exists > upstream in few device drivers. > > > So here is how every body else is doing it. Please explain why > this does not work. > > 1 Userspace open device file driver. Kernel device driver create > a context and associate it with on open. This context can be > uniq to the process and can bind hardware resources (like a > command queue) to the process. > 2 Userspace bind/acquire a commands queue and initialize it with > an ioctl on the device file. Through that ioctl userspace can > be inform wether either SVA/SVM works for the device. If SVA/ > SVM works then kernel device driver bind the process to the > device as part of this ioctl. > 3 If SVM/SVA does not work userspace do an ioctl to create dma > buffer or something that does exactly the same thing. > 4 Userspace mmap the command queue (mmap of the device file by > using informations gather at step 2) > 5 Userspace can write commands into the queue it mapped > 6 When userspace close the device file all resources are release > just like any existing device drivers. > > Now if you want to create a device driver framework that expose > a device file with generic API for all of the above steps fine. > But it does not need to be part of VFIO whatsoever or explain > why. > > > Note that if IOMMU is fully disabled you probably want to block > userspace from being able to directly scheduling commands onto > the hardware as it would allow userspace to DMA anywhere and thus > would open the kernel to easy exploits. In this case you can still > keeps the same API as above and use page fault tricks to valid > commands written by userspace into fake commands ring. This will > be as slow or maybe even slower than ioctl but at least it allows > you to validate commands. > > Cheers, > Jérôme