On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 02:43:03PM -0800, Dan Williams wrote: > Back when we were first attempting to support DMA for DAX mappings of > persistent memory the plan was to forgo 'struct page' completely and > develop a pfn-to-scatterlist capability for the dma-mapping-api. That > effort died in this thread: > > https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/8/14/3 > > ...where we learned that the dependencies on struct page for dma > mapping are deeper than a PFN_PHYS() conversion for some > architectures. That was the moment we pivoted to ZONE_DEVICE and > arranged for a 'struct page' to be available for any persistent memory > range that needs to be the target of DMA. ZONE_DEVICE enables any > device-driver that can target "System RAM" to also be able to target > persistent memory through a DAX mapping. > > Since that time the "page-less" DAX path has continued to mature [1] > without growing new dependencies on struct page, but at the same time > continuing to rely on ZONE_DEVICE to satisfy get_user_pages(). > > Peer-to-peer DMA appears to be evolving from a niche embedded use case > to something general purpose platforms will need to comprehend. The > "map_peer_resource" [2] approach looks to be headed to the same > destination as the pfn-to-scatterlist effort. It's difficult to avoid > 'struct page' for describing DMA operations without custom driver > code. > > With that background, a statement and a question to discuss at LSF/MM: > > General purpose DMA, i.e. any DMA setup through the dma-mapping-api, > requires pfn_to_page() support across the entire physical address > range mapped. Note that in my case it is even worse. The pfn of the page does not correspond to anything so it need to go through a special function to find if a page can be mapped for another device and to provide a valid pfn at which the page can be access by other device. Basicly the PCIE bar is like a window into the device memory that is dynamicly remap to specific page of the device memory. Not all device memory can be expose through PCIE bar because of PCIE issues. > > Is ZONE_DEVICE the proper vehicle for this? We've already seen that it > collides with platform alignment assumptions [3], and if there's a > wider effort to rework memory hotplug [4] it seems DMA support should > be part of the discussion. Obvioulsy i would like to join this discussion :) Cheers, Jérôme -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>