Re: [PATCH v3 1/1] iommu/vt-d: Remove caching mode check before device TLB flush

[Baolu Lu <baolu.lu@linux.intel.com>]

On 4/15/24 2:56 PM, Yi Liu wrote:
> On 2024/4/15 13:00, Baolu Lu wrote:
>> On 4/15/24 10:43 AM, Yi Liu wrote:
>>> On 2024/4/15 10:22, Zhang, Tina wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: Lu Baolu <baolu.lu@linux.intel.com>
>>>>> Sent: Monday, April 15, 2024 9:39 AM
>>>>> To: iommu@lists.linux.dev
>>>>> Cc: Tian, Kevin <kevin.tian@intel.com>; Liu, Yi L 
>>>>> <yi.l.liu@intel.com>; Jacob
>>>>> Pan <jacob.jun.pan@linux.intel.com>; Joerg Roedel 
>>>>> <joro@8bytes.org>; Will
>>>>> Deacon <will@kernel.org>; Robin Murphy <robin.murphy@arm.com>; linux-
>>>>> kernel@vger.kernel.org; Lu Baolu <baolu.lu@linux.intel.com>
>>>>> Subject: [PATCH v3 1/1] iommu/vt-d: Remove caching mode check before
>>>>> device TLB flush
>>>>>
>>>>> The Caching Mode (CM) of the Intel IOMMU indicates if the hardware
>>>>> implementation caches not-present or erroneous 
>>>>> translation-structure entries
>>>>> except for the first-stage translation. The caching mode is 
>>>>> irrelevant to the
>>>>> device TLB, therefore there is no need to check it before a device TLB
>>>>> invalidation operation.
>>>>>
>>>>> Remove two caching mode checks before device TLB invalidation in 
>>>>> the driver.
>>>>> The removal of these checks doesn't change the driver's behavior in 
>>>>> critical
>>>>> map/unmap paths. Hence, there is no functionality or performance 
>>>>> impact,
>>>>> especially since commit <29b32839725f> ("iommu/vt-d:
>>>>> Do not use flush-queue when caching-mode is on") has already disabled
>>>>> flush-queue for caching mode. Therefore, caching mode will never call
>>>>> intel_flush_iotlb_all().
>>>> The current logic is if the caching mode is being used and a domain 
>>>> isn't using first level I/O page table, then flush-queue won't be 
>>>> used. Otherwise, the flush-queue can be enabled.
>>>> See https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/257ec29074
>>>>
>>>> In other words, if the caching mode is being used and a domain is 
>>>> using first level I/O page table, the flush-queue can be used for 
>>>> this domain to flush iotlb. Could the code change in this patch 
>>>> bring any performance impact to this case?
>>>
>>> This seems to have performance deduction in the nested translation case.
>>> The iommufd nested support bas been merged in 6.8, while the Qemu side
>>> is wip. So this performance deduction does not happen until Qemu is
>>> done. Should this also be considered as a performance regression? TBH.
>>
>> Caching mode is irrelevant to first-stage and nesting translations. If
>> the QEMU implementation still relies on caching mode for nesting
>> support, it's already broken.
> 
> For first-stage, yes, caching mode is irrelevant. But for nesting, still
> be relevant. Because it relies on caching mode to capture the mofifications
> of the pasid entry. Without caching mode, vIOMMU device model within 
> QEMU will miss the newly setup pasid entries, hence no way to setup nested
> translation at all.

Okay, it's reasonable that nesting translation still uses second-stage.
But the removed checks in this patch don't impact the pasid table change
capture, right?

Best regards,
baolu