RE: [RFC] /dev/ioasid uAPI proposal

Parav Pandit
2021-06-01T12:04:08Z

> From: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@nvidia.com>
> Sent: Monday, May 31, 2021 11:43 PM
>
> On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 05:37:35PM +0000, Parav Pandit wrote:
>
> > In that case, can it be a new system call? Why does it have to be under
> /dev/ioasid?
> > For example few years back such system call mpin() thought was proposed
> in [1].
>
> Reference counting of the overall pins are required
>
> So when a pinned pages is incorporated into an IOASID page table in a later
> IOCTL it means it cannot be unpinned while the IOASID page table is using it.
Ok. but cant it use the same refcount of that mmu uses?

>
> This is some trick to organize the pinning into groups and then refcount each
> group, thus avoiding needing per-page refcounts.
Pinned page refcount is already maintained by the mmu without ioasid, isn't it?

>
> The data structure would be an interval tree of pins in general
>
> The ioasid itself would have an interval tree of its own mappings, each entry
> in this tree would reference count against an element in the above tree
>
> Then the ioasid's interval tree would be mapped into a page table tree in HW
> format.
Does it mean in simple use case [1], second level page table copy is maintained in the IOMMU side via map interface?
I hope not. It should use the same as what mmu uses, right?

[1] one SIOV/ADI device assigned with one PASID and mapped in guest VM

>
> The redundant storages are needed to keep track of the refencing and the
> CPU page table values for later unpinning.
>
> Jason