Re: [PATCH 0/8] dma-mapping: migrate to physical address-based API

Leon Romanovsky
2025-06-27T17:02:22Z

On Fri, Jun 27, 2025 at 03:44:10PM +0200, Marek Szyprowski wrote:
> On 25.06.2025 15:18, Leon Romanovsky wrote:
> > This series refactors the DMA mapping to use physical addresses
> > as the primary interface instead of page+offset parameters. This
> > change aligns the DMA API with the underlying hardware reality where
> > DMA operations work with physical addresses, not page structures.
> >
> > The series consists of 8 patches that progressively convert the DMA
> > mapping infrastructure from page-based to physical address-based APIs:
> >
> > The series maintains backward compatibility by keeping the old
> > page-based API as wrapper functions around the new physical
> > address-based implementations.
>
> Thanks for this rework! I assume that the next step is to add map_phys
> callback also to the dma_map_ops and teach various dma-mapping providers
> to use it to avoid more phys-to-page-to-phys conversions.

Probably Christoph will say yes, however I personally don't see any
benefit in this. Maybe I wrong here, but all existing .map_page()
implementation platforms don't support p2p anyway. They won't benefit
from this such conversion.

>
> I only wonder if this newly introduced dma_map_phys()/dma_unmap_phys()
> API is also suitable for the recently discussed PCI P2P DMA? While
> adding a new API maybe we should take this into account?

First, immediate user (not related to p2p) is blk layer:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-nvme/bcdcb5eb-17ed-412f-bf5c-303079798fe2@nvidia.com/T/#m7e715697d4b2e3997622a3400243477c75cab406

+static bool blk_dma_map_direct(struct request *req, struct device *dma_dev,
+ struct blk_dma_iter *iter, struct phys_vec *vec)
+{
+ iter->addr = dma_map_page(dma_dev, phys_to_page(vec->paddr),
+ offset_in_page(vec->paddr), vec->len, rq_dma_dir(req));
+ if (dma_mapping_error(dma_dev, iter->addr)) {
+ iter->status = BLK_STS_RESOURCE;
+ return false;
+ }
+ iter->len = vec->len;
+ return true;
+}

Block layer started to store phys addresses instead of struct pages and
this phys_to_page() conversion in data-path will be avoided.

> My main concern is the lack of the source phys addr passed to the dma_unmap_phys()
> function and I'm aware that this might complicate a bit code conversion
> from old dma_map/unmap_page() API.
>
> Best regards
> --
> Marek Szyprowski, PhD
> Samsung R&D Institute Poland
>
>