Re: [PATCH 5/6] drm/i915/reset: Handle the display vs. GPU reset deadlock using a custom dma-fence

Ville Syrjälä
2026-04-13T09:11:43Z

On Thu, Apr 09, 2026 at 02:17:07PM +0200, Christian König wrote:
> On 4/9/26 13:19, Ville Syrjälä wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 09, 2026 at 12:46:11PM +0200, Christian König wrote:
> >> On 4/9/26 01:34, Ville Syrjala wrote:
> >>> From: Ville Syrjälä <ville.syrjala@linux.intel.com>
> >>>
> >>> The old display vs. GPU reset deadlock is back more or less.
> >>> The old (working) solution to the problem was originally
> >>> introduced in commit 9db529aac938 ("drm/i915: More surgically
> >>> unbreak the modeset vs reset deadlock"), but it got nuked with
> >>> commit d59cf7bb73f3 ("drm/i915/display: Use dma_fence interfaces
> >>> instead of i915_sw_fence").
> >>>
> >>> Apparently no one looked hard enough to see that things didn't
> >>> work quite properly anymore. What is still saving us for the most
> >>> part is that we have a timeout on the fence wait
> >>> (CONFIG_DRM_I915_FENCE_TIMEOUT, 10 seconds by default). But
> >>> people are perhaps trying to get rid of that so we may need
> >>> another solution, and 10 seconds is a bit slow.
> >>
> >> Yeah agree that approach with the timeout is usually a big no no.
> >>
> >>> Re-solve the problem yet again with a custom dma-fence that gets
> >>> signaled just prior to a GPU reset, and have the atomic commit wait
> >>> for either that or the real fence using dma_fence_wait_any_timeout().
> >>
> >> Hui? I don't fully understand what the source of the problem is, but of hand that approach of solving it doesn't sound like a good idea either.
> >>
> >>> Whichever signals first will let the commit proceed. We create a new
> >>> "reset fence" whenever someone needs one, and keep it until the next
> >>> GPU reset has completed. After that the next guy will again get a
> >>> fresh unsignaled "reset fence".
> >>
> >> And that sounds even worse. A dma_fence which waits for the next GPU reset without triggering it itself would be an indefinite dma_fence which is not allowed.
> >
> > This is a purely internal thing to the i915 display code. This fence
> > is never shared with anyone. And we never wait for just this fence,
> > the wait always happens alongside a real fence using
> > dma_fence_wait_any_timeout().
> >
> >>
> >> I think something is missing in my picture how that is supposed to work.
> >
> > The problem stems from the fact that on old platforms a GPU reset
> > also resets the display hardware,
>
> Which is true for at least AMD GPUs and I think pretty much everybody else as well, but that wasn't so much of a problem so far.
>
> > and to do that safely we need:
> > 1. shut down display
> > 2. perform the GPU reset
> > 3. restore the display hardware to its orignal state
>
> Mhm, I've recently talked with Michel about it and we confirmed that this is perfectly possible without issues. Adding Michel as well.
>
> > We just do that with essentially with a normal atomic commit.
>
> I think that is the source of the problem.
>
> I'm not an expert on that topic but amdgpu and tons of other drivers seem to just use drm_atomic_helper_shutdown() for that.

drm_atomic_helper_shutdown() is definitely not the thing to use
for this as it would clobber the stored kms state, leaving everything
permanently disabled. The drm_atomic_helper_commit_duplicated_state()
stuff i915 uses is the correct thing here.

But for this problem it doesn't even matter which gets used. Either
would get equally stuck behind a previous atomic commit waiting for
its fences.

>
> What is i915 doing differently?

I see zero code for any display reset stuff in any other driver. If
amdgpu does anything it must be something completely custom, hidden
somewhere deep.

>
> > But a
> > previous atomic commit may already be waiting for a fence, which
> > won't signal until the GPU reset happens, and the GPU reset is now
> > waiting for that previous atomic commit to finish so that it can do
> > its own atomic commit. In order to break the deadlock we need to
> > abort the fence waits in the atomic commit, and that's what this
> > "reset fence" achieves.
>
> As far as I can see that approach looks strongly like a no-go.
>
> You essentially have a lock inversion here and it is documented that it should *never* be resolved by a timeout, the approach you take now is not much better.

Unless someone wants to add some kind of extra abort mechanism to
dma_fence_wait*() then I think this is probably the best solution.
And given this is only a thing for one driver on old hardware,
adding extra stuff to dma_fence_wait*() doesn't really seem worth
the hassle.

--
Ville Syrjälä
Intel