RE: [PATCH v3 02/20] hw/pci: Introduce pci_device_get_viommu_cap()

[Shameerali Kolothum Thodi via <qemu-devel@nongnu.org>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nicolin Chen <nicolinc@nvidia.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 9, 2025 8:20 PM
> To: Donald Dutile <ddutile@redhat.com>
> Cc: Zhenzhong Duan <zhenzhong.duan@intel.com>; qemu-
> devel@nongnu.org; alex.williamson@redhat.com; clg@redhat.com;
> eric.auger@redhat.com; mst@redhat.com; jasowang@redhat.com;
> peterx@redhat.com; jgg@nvidia.com; Shameerali Kolothum Thodi
> <shameerali.kolothum.thodi@huawei.com>; joao.m.martins@oracle.com;
> clement.mathieu--drif@eviden.com; kevin.tian@intel.com;
> yi.l.liu@intel.com; chao.p.peng@intel.com
> Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 02/20] hw/pci: Introduce
> pci_device_get_viommu_cap()
> 
> On Wed, Jul 09, 2025 at 01:55:46PM -0400, Donald Dutile wrote:
> > > > +enum {
> > > > +    VIOMMU_CAP_STAGE1 = BIT_ULL(0),  /* stage1 page table
> supported */
> > > > +};
> > >
> > > Thanks for this work. I am happy to see that we can share the
> > > common code that allocates a NESTING_PARENT in the core using
> > > this flag.
> > >
> > > Yet on ARM, a STAGE1 page table isn't always a nested S1, the
> > > hardware accelerated one. More often, it can be just a regular
> > > 1-stage translation table via emulated translation code and an
> > > emulated iotlb.
> > >
> > Because the user-created smmuv3 started as 'accelerated smmuv3',
> > and had been 'de-accelerated' to simply 'user created smmuv3',
> > I'm looking for some clarification in the above statement/request.
> >
> > Is the above suppose to reflect that a nested IOMMU has some hw-
> acceleration
> > in its Stage1 implementation?
> > If so, then call it that: STAGE1_ACCEL.
> > If it's suppose to represent that an IOMMU has nested/2-stage support,
> > then the above is a valid cap;  -but-, having a nested/2-stage support
> IOMMU
> > doesn't necessarily mean its accelerated.
> 
> Well, there are an emulated "nested" mode and an hw-accelerated
> "nested" mode in the smmuv3 code, so we had to choose something
> like "accel" over "nested".
> 
> Here, on the other hand, I think the core using this CAP would
> unlikely care about an emulated "nested" mode in the individual
> vIOMMU..
> 
> So I suggested:
>      /* hardware-accelerated nested stage-1 page table support */
>     VIOMMU_CAP_NESTED_S1 = BIT_ULL(0),
> 
> which it should be clear IMHO.
> 
> If not, maybe go a bit further like "VIOMMU_CAP_HW_NESTED_S1"?

I am not sure the _S1 part makes much sense in ARM case. It doesn't matter
whether the Guest SMMUv3 is configured in s1/s2 or nested for this CAP. 
With the new SMMUv3 dev support, the user can pretty much specify,

-device arm-smmuv3,primary-bus=pcie.0,id=smmuv3.1,accel=on,stage={stage1|stage2|nested}

And I think it will work with a host SMMUv3 nested configuration in all the
above cases. Unless I am missing something and we need to restrict its
use with stage=stage1 only.

Thanks,
Shameer