Re: ARM SMMU - Stall mode

["Edgar E. Iglesias" <edgar.iglesias-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>]

On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 04:55:05PM +0000, Will Deacon wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 06:52:07AM +0000, Edgar E. Iglesias wrote:
> > Hi,
> 
> Hello Edgar,
> 
> > I'm looking at adding models for the SMMU and it's stall feature to
> > Xilinx ZynqMP QEMU models. The stall mode is quite problematic to
> > model though. So I'm trying to figure out if I can get away without it :-)
> 
> Sure -- just make the context bank SCTLR.CFCFG fields RES0 and you'll be
> fine. The stall mode is optional in the architecture and not used by
> Linux.
> 
> > I was trying to figure from the kernel sources if the SMMU Stall mode
> > (for stalling and later resuming failed memory accesses) is used by
> > the kernel.
> > 
> > AFAICT, the stall mode is enabled by the SMMU driver but the users of
> > the report_iommu_fault() callbacks seem to all just do error reporting.
> > Do I understand correctly in that Linux/KVM is currently not really
> > depending on the stall function?
> > 
> > Are there any plans or ongoing work to implement paging features that
> > would require the stall/resume feature for IOMMUs?
> > E.g swapping of DMA:able memory, CoW etc.
> > 
> > I noticed that AMD has something in their HSA/KFD framework around it
> > but it seems quite AMD specific, please correct me if I'm wrong.
> 
> The main issue with the stall model is that it doesn't work nicely with
> PCI and is prone to deadlock on systems that haven't been designed with
> stalled transactions in mind. If/when Linux gets support for paged DMA
> memory this will probably be using ATS/PRI.

Thanks Will,

What is the situation for platform devices (non-PCI) hanging off on-chip
AXI interconnects for example, do you think the SMMUs stall mode would
be useful to Linux to do paged DMA?
Or is the stall mode unlikely to be used at all with current versions
of the SMMU?

Thanks again for your feedback!

Best regards,
Edgar