On 10/29/24 09:52, Jacopo Mondi wrote: > Hi Hans > > On Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 09:17:57AM +0100, Hans Verkuil wrote: >> On 28/10/2024 16:52, Laurent Pinchart wrote: >>> Hi Hans, >>> >>> On Mon, Oct 28, 2024 at 12:10:22PM +0100, Hans Verkuil wrote: >>>> Hi all, >>>> >>>> This mail thread uncovered some corner cases around how many buffers should be allocated >>>> if VIDIOC_REQBUFS with count = 1 is called: >>>> >>>> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-media/20241003-rp1-cfe-v6-0-d6762edd98a8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/T/#mc2210597d92b5a0f09fabdac2f7307128aaa9bd8 >>> >>> I'll repeat below some comments I've made in that thread, as they're >>> better discussed in the context of this RFC. >>> >>>> When it comes to the minimum number of buffers there are a number of limitations: >>>> >>>> 1) The DMA engine needs at least N buffers to be queued before it can start. Typically >>>> this is 0, 1 or 2, and a driver sets this via the vb2_queue min_queued_buffers field. >>>> So if min_queued_buffers = 1, then the DMA engine needs one buffer at all times to >>>> DMA to. Allocating just one buffer would mean the DMA engine can never return that >>>> buffer to userspace (it would just keep recycling the same buffer over and over), so >>>> the minimum must be min_queued_buffers + 1. >>> >>> I think you're mixing hardware and driver constraints here. Drivers can >>> use scratch buffers to relax the hardware requirements, and allow >>> userspace operation with less buffers than strictly required by the >>> hardware. >>> >>> The cost of allocating such scratch buffers vary depending on the >>> device. When an IOMMU is available, or when the device has a line stride >>> that can be set to 0 and supports race-free programming of the stride >>> and buffer addresses, the scratch buffer can be as small as a single >>> page or a single line. In other cases, a full-frame scratch buffer is >>> required, which is costly, and the decision on whether or not to >>> allocate such a scratch buffer should probably be taken with userspace >>> being involved. >> >> I honestly don't see why you would want to spend a lot of time on adding >> scratch buffer support just to save a bit of memory. Is the use-case of >> capturing just a single buffer so common? To me it seems that it only >> makes sense to spend effort on this if you only need to capture a single >> buffer and never need to stream more buffers. > > I can give you two examples I'm currently working with > > - A device with a "viewfinder" device node and a "still capture" > capture device. We want to only queue one buffer to the "still > capture" capture device when the user requires to (the usual "tap to > capture"). Adam which was in cc to my patch for RkISP1 that removes > min_queued_buffers was struggling to implement "tap to capture" > support in his application has he had to queue 3 buffers before he > could capture an image from the "still capture" pipe. > > - A resource constrained device that only capture one frame > sporadically because it needs to reduce memory pressure and can't > allocate a number of buffers that allows it to keep the queued > buffers queue populated to sustain high frame rates produced by the > sensor > > - In libcamera we want the image pipeline to be running even if no > buffers are queued to the capture devices at its end. This means > that we want statistics to be produced by the ISP and parameters to > be consumed even if the frames produced by the ISP are actually > discarded to the scratch buffers. > > We want this because we want the algorithms to keep running even if > users are queuing capture buffers sporadically, to ensure a smaller as > possible recovery period of the 3A algorithms (ideally, there > shouldn't be nothing to recover from as the system is 'live' all the > time) so we want stats to be generated for every frame produced by > the sensor. And we ideally want this from frame#0 without waiting > for users to queue a min number buffer to start the pipeline. > > I'm sure in robotics/machine vision there are even more advanced use > cases for capturing single buffers in response to events from the > external world. Just for the record: I have no problem with drivers implementing scratch buffers so you can leave min_queued_buffers at 0. But I don't think I would want to enforce it for non-ISP drivers, and it certainly won't help existing drivers that set min_queued_buffers to a non-zero value since those are old and nobody will change those drivers to support scratch buffers. > >> >> Can you describe the use-case of capturing just a single buffer? Is that >> just for testing libcamera? Or is it something that happens all the time >> during normal libcamera operation? >> >> Supporting scratch buffers is a lot of effort for something that is not >> needed for normal streaming. >> >>> >>> min_queued_buffers describes how the device operates from a userspace >>> point of view, so I don't think it should be considered or documented as >>> being a hardware requirement, but a driver requirement. >> >> It's a hardware and/or driver requirement. It is absolutely not a userspace >> requirement. Normal userspace applications that use VIDIOC_REQBUFS and just >> stream video will never notice this. >> >>> >>>> 2) Historically VIDIOC_REQBUFS is expected to increase the count value to a number that >>>> ensures the application can smoothly process the video stream. Typically this will >>>> be 3 or 4 (if min_queued_buffers == 2): min_queued_buffers are used by the DMA engine, >>>> one buffer is queued up in vb2, ready to be used by the DMA engine as soon as it >>>> returns a filled buffer to userspace, and one buffer is processed by userspace. >>>> >>>> This is to support applications that call VIDIOC_REQBUFS with count = 1 and leave it >>>> to the driver to increment it to a workable value. >>> >>> Do we know what those applications are ? I'm not disputing the fact that >>> this may need to be supported to avoid breaking old userspace, but I >>> also think this feature should be phased out for new drivers, especially >>> drivers that require a device-specific userspace and therefore won't >>> work out of the box with old applications. >> >> xawtv is one: it will call REQBUFS with count = 2 (so this would fail for >> any driver that sets min_queued_buffers to 2), and with count = 1 if it wants >> to capture just a single frame. >> >> 'git grep min_queued_buffers|grep -v videobuf|wc' gives me 83 places where it is >> set. Some of those are likely wrong (min_queued_buffers has been abused as a >> replacement for min_reqbufs_allocation), but still that's quite a lot. >> >> Mostly these are older drivers for hardware without an IOMMU and typically for >> SDTV capture. So memory is not a consideration for those drivers since a >> SDTV buffer is quite small. >> >>> >>>> 3) Stateful codecs in particular have additional requirements beyond the DMA engine >>>> limits due to the fact that they have to keep track of reference buffers and other >>>> codec limitations. As such more buffers are needed, and that number might also vary >>>> based on the specific codec used. The V4L2_CID_MIN_BUFFERS_FOR_CAPTURE/OUTPUT >>>> controls are used to report that. Support for this is required by the stateful codec >>>> API. >>>> >>>> The documentation of these controls suggest that these are generic controls, but >>>> as of today they are only used by stateful codec drivers. >>>> >>>> 4) Some corner cases (mainly/only SDR, I think) where you need more than the usual >>>> 3 or 4 buffers since the buffers arrive at a high frequency. >>> >>> High frame rates is an important feature, but it's also a can of worms. >>> V4L2 is lacking the ability to batch multiple frames, we will have to >>> address that. Hopefully it could be decoupled from this RFC. >> >> It's a separate issue indeed. I just mentioned it because I know SDR drivers >> use this. They are rarely used, though. >> >>> >>>> Rather than have drivers try to correct the count value (typically incorrectly), the >>>> vb2_queue min_reqbufs_allocation field was added to set the minimum number of >>>> buffers that VIDIOC_REQBUFS should allocate if count is less than that. >>> >>> Even if I dislike this feature, I agree it's better implemented through >>> min_reqbufs_allocation than by manual calculations in drivers. >>> >>>> VIDIOC_CREATE_BUFS is not affected by that: if you use CREATE_BUFS you take full control >>>> of how many buffers you want to create. It might create fewer buffers if you run out of >>>> memory, but never more than requested. >>>> >>>> But what is missing is that if you use CREATE_BUFS you need to know the value of >>>> min_queued_buffers + 1, and that is not exposed. >>>> >>>> I would propose to add a min_num_buffers field to struct v4l2_create_buffers >>>> and add a V4L2_BUF_CAP_SUPPORTS_MIN_NUM_BUFFERS flag to signal the presence of >>>> that field. And vb2 can set it to min_queued_buffers + 1. >>> >>> This would require allocating a buffer first to get the value. Wouldn't >>> a read-only control be better ? >> >> No. You can call CREATE_BUFS with count = 0: in that case it does nothing, >> except filling in all those capabilities. It was designed with that in mind >> so you have an ioctl that can return all that information. >> >>> >>> Furthermore, I would rather provide the min_queued_buffers value instead >>> of min_queued_buffers + 1. The V4L2 API should provide userspace with >>> information it needs to make informed decisions, but not make those >>> decisions in behalf of userspace. It's up to applications to add 1 or >>> more buffers depending on their use case. >> >> I would definitely want more opinions on this. What's the point of returning >> min_queued_buffers and then creating that many buffers and still not be able >> to stream? > > There are use cases for memory constrained systems where buffers are > only queued sporadically. It might come from the requirement of > allocating less buffers as possible [*] or because processing frames > takes a longer time and maintaing the buffer queue populated for sustained > frame-rate operations would require a lot of buffers to be reserved. You misunderstood me, sorry for that. My question was about whether CREATE_BUFS would report 'min_queued_buffers' (so >= 0) or min_queued_buffers + 1 (so >= 1). In the latter case you can pass that value on to REQBUFS. In the first case you would have to add 1 to it yourself if you want to use it with REQBUFS. Personally I think that is very confusing. Regards, Hans > > In general, we can't predict the use cases in which a driver will be > used, so informing user-space about the actual requirements without > trying to hint what they should do seems better to me, > > [*] I understand that allocating a full scratch buffer in the driver > kind of goes in the opposite direction of "not wasting memory" but if > the DMA engine does not support discarding frames in HW, a single buffer > in kernel space avoids a larger allocation in user space > >> >> Can you think of a scenario (e.g. in libcamera or elsewhere) where that makes >> sense? >> >> Also, will the average V4L2 user have the knowledge to understand that? You >> have that knowledge, but I think for anyone else it would be really confusing. >> >>> >>> I think we also need to discuss policies regarding scratch buffer >>> allocation in the context of this RFC. When the hardware supports small >>> scratch buffers, I would like to make it mandatory for drivers to do so >>> and support min_queued_buffers = 0. >> >> I would first like to know the use-case (as I mentioned above). >> >> For the type of drivers I mostly work with (video receivers), it would just >> be a lot of work for no gain. But perhaps for camera pipelines it does make >> sense? >> >>> When scratch buffers are expensive, do we want to still support them in >>> the kernel, perhaps in a way controlled by userspace ? A userspace that >>> can guarantee it will always provide min_queued_buffers + 1 buffers >>> could indicate so and avoid scratch buffer allocation, while a userspace >>> that can't provide that guarantee would get scratch buffers from the >>> kernel. >> >> That is really the difference between using VIDIOC_REQBUFS and VIDIOC_CREATE_BUFS. >> I.e., userspace can already choose this. >> >> Just to clarify the reason for this RFC: the current situation is messy. There >> is a lot of history and a lot of older drivers do not always do the right thing. >> >> With this RFC I would like to get a consensus of how it should work. After that >> I want to implement any missing bits and improve the documentation, and finally >> go through the drivers and at least try to make them behave consistently. > > my2c: if CREATE_BUFFERS(0) allows to retrieve min_queued_buffers to > allow userspace make informed decisions about how many buffers to > allocate to at least get streaming going, I would be happy with such > API more than with a control. > > When it comes to scratch buffers usage, I'm not sure we can enforce it > as a requirement (or even try to provide some helper in the core for > drivers) but I defintately see use cases for applicating queueing buffers > sporadically and for driver being ready to discard frames without > stalling or delaying the start of the capture pipeline operations. > > Thanks > j > >> >> Also I want to improve v4l2-compliance to test more corner cases, especially >> if you use CREATE_BUFS instead of REQBUFS (I already have a patch for that >> ready). >> >> The work Benjamin did on increasing the max number of supported buffers and the >> REMOVE_BUFS ioctl uncovered a lot of that messy history, and it is clear we need >> to try and clarify how it should work. >> >>>> The second proposal is to explicitly document that the V4L2_CID_MIN_BUFFERS_FOR_CAPTURE/OUTPUT >>>> are for stateful codec support only, at least for now. >> >> I just discovered that v4l2-compliance and v4l2-ctl do not honor these controls >> for stateful codecs. That's something that needs to be fixed. >> >> There is also one other item that I would like to discuss: the vb2 queue_setup >> callback is currently used for both REQBUFS and CREATE_BUFS, and it remains >> confusing for drivers how to use it exactly. I am inclined to redesign that >> part, most likely splitting it in two: either one callback for REQBUFS and one >> for CREATE_BUFS, or alternatively, one callback when allocating buffers for >> the first time (so REQBUFS and when CREATE_BUFS is called for the first time, >> i.e. when no buffers are allocated yet), and one callback when adding additional >> buffers. I would have to think about this, and probably experiment a bit. >> >> Regards, >> >> Hans >> >>>> >>>> If this is in place, then min_reqbufs_allocation should be set to a sane number of >>>> buffers (i.e. typically 3 or 4), and if you want precise control, use VIDIOC_CREATE_BUFS. >>> >> >>
