Re: [PATCH net-next v3 0/2] dma-buf: heaps: system: add an option to allocate explicitly decrypted memory

Jason Gunthorpe
2026-03-24T12:24:18Z

On Tue, Mar 24, 2026 at 12:14:36PM +0000, Mostafa Saleh wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2026 at 12:01 PM Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ziepe.ca> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Mar 17, 2026 at 01:24:13PM +0000, Mostafa Saleh wrote:
> >
> > > On the other hand, for restricted-dma, the memory decryption is deep
> > > in the DMA direct memory allocation and the DMA API callers (for ex
> > > virtio drivers) are clueless about it and can’t pass any attrs.
> > > My proposal was specific to restricted-dma and won’t work for your case.
> >
> > How is this any different from CC?
> >
> > If the device cannot dma to "encrypted" memory, whatever that means
> > for you, then the DMA API:
> > - Makes dma alloc coherent return "decrypted" memory, and the built
> > in mapping of coherent memory knows about this
> > - Makes dma_map_xxx use SWIOTLB to bounce to decrypted memory
> >
> > There is no need for something like virtio drivers to be aware of
> > any of this.
> >
> > On the other hand if the driver deliberately allocates decrypted
> > memory without using DMA API alloc coherent then it knows it did it
> > and can pass the flag to map it.
> >
>
> The problem is that the DMA API currently gets confused by this; it
> can end up double decrypting the memory or using the wrong functions
> as mentioned in [1]

I fully belive there are bugs, but the API design is sound. If you use
the coherent allocations from the DMA API then it knows decryption has
happened when it generates a dma_addr_t and there should be no issue.

Now, if drivers are using the DMA API wrong, like trying to double map
coherent allocations then they are broken. I also would not be
surprised to find cases like this.

Jason