Re: Why memory lending is needed for GPU acceleration

Demi Marie Obenour
2026-03-30T12:25:16Z

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On 3/30/26 06:15, Teddy Astie wrote:
> Le 29/03/2026 à 19:32, Demi Marie Obenour a écrit :
>> On 3/24/26 10:17, Demi Marie Obenour wrote:
>>> Here is a proposed design document for supporting mapping GPU VRAM
>>> and/or file-backed memory into other domains. It's not in the form of
>>> a patch because the leading + characters would just make it harder to
>>> read for no particular gain, and because this is still RFC right now.
>>> Once it is ready to merge, I'll send a proper patch. Nevertheless,
>>> you can consider this to be
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com>
>>>
>>> This approach is very different from the "frontend-allocates"
>>> approach used elsewhere in Xen. It is very much Linux-centric,
>>> rather than Xen-centric. In fact, MMU notifiers were invented for
>>> KVM, and this approach is exactly the same as the one KVM implements.
>>> However, to the best of my understanding, the design described here is
>>> the only viable one. Linux MM and GPU drivers require it, and changes
>>> to either to relax this requirement will not be accepted upstream.
>>
>> Teddy Astie (CCd) proposed a couple of alternatives on Matrix:
>>
>> 1. Create dma-bufs for guest pages and import them into the host.
>>
>> This is a win not only for Xen, but also for KVM. Right now, shared
>> (CPU) memory buffers must be copied from the guest to the host,
>> which is pointless. So fixing that is a good thing! That said,
>> I'm still concerned about triggering GPU driver code-paths that
>> are not tested on bare metal.
>>
>> 2. Use PASID and 2-stage translation so that the GPU can operate in
>> guest physical memory.
>>
>> This is also a win. AMD XDNA absolutely requires PASID support,
>> and apparently AMD GPUs can also use PASID. So being able to use
>> PASID is certainly helpful.
>>
>> However, I don't think either approach is sufficient for two reasons.
>>
>> First, discrete GPUs have dedicated VRAM, which Xen knows nothing about.
>> Only dom0's GPU drivers can manage VRAM, and they will insist on being
>> able to migrate it between the CPU and the GPU. Furthermore, VRAM
>> can only be allocated using GPU driver ioctls, which will allocate
>> it from dom0-owned memory.
>>
>> Second, Certain Wayland protocols, such as screencapture, require programs
>> to be able to import dmabufs. Both of the above solutions would
>> require that the pages be pinned. I don't think this is an option,
>> as IIUC pin_user_pages() fails on mappings of these dmabufs. It's why
>> direct I/O to dmabufs doesn't work.
>>
>
> I suppose it fails because of the RAM/VRAM constraint you said
> previously. If the location of the memory stays the same (i.e guest
> memory mapping), pin should be almost "no-op".

Yup, there is no reason it shouldn't work for mappings of guest memory,
udmabufs or indeed for iGPU dmabufs. Whether it does work is another
question. I believe it sometimes fails even when it could work,
due to (fixable) Linux kernel limitations.

> (though, having dma-buf buffers coming from GPU drivers failing to pin
> is probably not a good thing in term of stability; some stuff like
> cameras probably break as a result; but I'm not a expert on that subject)

I suspect that it works for the drivers where this situation applies
in practice. To the best of my knowledge, these drivers are either
for iGPUs or for compute workloads. Compute workloads *do* need tight
control of whether a workload is in system RAM or VRAM, and typical
desktops don't have a bunch of them sitting idle so the benefits of
paging out their VRAM are vastly reduced.

>> To the best of my knowledge, these problems mean that lending memory
>> is the only way to get robust GPU acceleration for both graphics and
>> compute workloads under Xen. Simpler approaches might work for pure
>> compute workloads, for iGPUs, or for drivers that have Xen-specific
>> changes. None of them, however, support graphics workloads on dGPUs
>> while using the GPU driver the same way bare metal workloads do.
>>
>> Linux's graphics stack is massive, and trying to adapt it to work with
>> Xen isn't going to be sustainable in the long term. Adapting Xen to
>> fit the graphics stack is probably more work up front, but it has the
>> advantage of working with all GPU drivers, including ones that have not
>> been written yet. It also means that the testing done on bare metal is
>> still applicable, and that bugs found when using this driver can either
>> be reproduced on bare metal or can be fixed without driver changes.
>
> One of my main concerns was about whether dma-buf can be used as
> "general purpose" GPU buffers; what I read in driver code suggest it
> should be fine, but it's a bit on the edge.

Importing dmabufs into GPU drivers should work unless there is a
reason it cannot work. If it doesn't, I would consider it to be a bug.
However, "should work" and "is widely tested" are two different things.
I don't want to have something regress and whoever is using this
(probably the Qubes team) responsible for fixing it.

is that what you meant by "it's a bit on the edge"?

>> Finally, I'm not actually attached to memory lending at all. It's a
>> lot of complexity, and it's not at all similar to how the rest of
>> Xen works. If someone else can come up with a better solution that
>> doesn't require GPU driver changes, I'd be all for it. Unfortunately,
>> I suspect none exists. One can make almost anything work if one is
>> willing to patch the drivers, but I am virtually certain that this
>> will not be long-term sustainable.
>>
>
> There's also the virtio-gpu side to consider. Blob mechanism appears to
> insist that GPU memory to come from the host by allowing buffers that
> aren't bound to virtio-gpu BAR yet (that also complexifies the KVM
> situation).

Indeed, that's not a good situation for anyone and ought to just
be fixed. CC'ing Alyssa Ross as this probably would help Spectrum too.

> You can have GPU memory that exists in virtio-gpu, without being
> guest-visible, then the guest can map it on its own BAR.

Would you mind explaining this?

One other question: How difficult would it be to implement memory
lending for someone experienced in Linux, Xen, and their interface?
What about for someone who is not experienced?
--
Sincerely,
Demi Marie Obenour (she/her/hers)

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