Re: [PATCH 0/2] scsi: Initial commit of VirtIO PCIe Endpoint Driver

[Niklas Cassel <cassel@kernel.org>]

On Tue, Sep 01, 2026 at 11:46:48AM +1000, alistair23@gmail.com wrote:
> From: Alistair Francis <alistair.francis@wdc.com>
> 
> This series adds a VirtIO SCSI endpoint built on top of the VirtIO PCIe
> endpoint. This is a similar approach to the NVMe PCIe Endpoint
> (drivers/nvme/target/pci-epf.c) but for SCSI.
> 
> This does end up being somewhat similar to the pci-epf.c code, but
> re-written for SCSI.
> 
> This approach allows a PCIe Endpoint device (tested on a
> radxa-rock5b) to setup what appears to be a SCSI device, using an
> existing SCSI backend (tested using scsi_debug).
> 
> At this point a host can connect over PCIe, ensure virtio_pci and
> virtio_scsi is loaded and on PCIe rescan will see a scsi device.
> 
> There are a few pain points with this approach though:
>  1. We have to use the Legacy SCSI VirtIO driver. This is because the
>     Raxda Rock5b (and AFAIK all PCIe Endpoint hardware) can't add
>     capabilities. So we can't advertise the VirtIO Common configuration
>     capability, which means we can't be a modern VirtIO SCSI device.
> 
>     This is unfortunate, but there doesn't seem to be any way around
>     this, at least with the current hardware.
> 
>  1.2. Legacy virtio devices only have 32 feature bits and therefore can't
>     set the VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM (bit 33) feature. This means the
>     vring_use_map_api() function will return false.
> 
>     Currently Linux endpoint devices use the legacy virtio interface as
>     they aren't able to advertise the Common configuration capability.
>     As most PCI endpoint capable PCIe controllers do not allow modifying the
>     capability list, and thus are unable to advertise the Common configuration
>     capability. This means the device's inbound TLPs fault on the host
>     SMMU because the vring descriptors carry raw physical addresses.
> 
>     This series adds a quirk that forces a subset of legacy virtio devices
>     to use the DMA Map API (vring_use_map_api() will return true),
>     which fixes this issue.
> 
>     It's unideal that we have to hard code a quirk to basically just
>     advertise the VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM feature, but (see 1) as we
>     are stuck with legacy virtio devices there isn't much else we can do.
> 
>  2. We have to pin scsit_pci_epf_poll_cfg_thread() on a CPU in order to
>     respond fast enough to the host. This means we effectivly burn a CPU
>     to read and write some values. But as there are no intterupts
>     generated on these events and we need to be very quick there isn't
>     another option.
> 
> With two Raxda Rock5bs connected together and the IOMMU turned off I see
> performance numbers like this
> 
> root@radxa-rock5b:~# fio-test.sh /dev/sda
> Running on /dev/sda...
>   Rnd read,    4KB,  QD=1, 1 job :  IOPS=223, BW=895KiB/s (917kB/s)
>   Rnd read,    4KB, QD=32, 1 job :  IOPS=7415, BW=29.0MiB/s (30.4MB/s)
>   Rnd read,    4KB, QD=32, 4 jobs:  IOPS=20.2k, BW=79.0MiB/s (82.8MB/s)
>   Rnd read,  128KB,  QD=1, 1 job :  IOPS=213, BW=26.7MiB/s (28.0MB/s)
>   Rnd read,  128KB, QD=32, 1 job :  IOPS=1482, BW=185MiB/s (194MB/s)
>   Rnd read,  128KB, QD=32, 4 jobs:  IOPS=2599, BW=325MiB/s (341MB/s)
>   Rnd read,  512KB,  QD=1, 1 job :  IOPS=184, BW=92.1MiB/s (96.6MB/s)
>   Rnd read,  512KB, QD=32, 1 job :  IOPS=1079, BW=540MiB/s (566MB/s)
>   Rnd read,  512KB, QD=32, 4 jobs:  IOPS=1284, BW=642MiB/s (674MB/s)
>   Rnd write,   4KB,  QD=1, 1 job :  IOPS=222, BW=889KiB/s (911kB/s)
>   Rnd write,   4KB, QD=32, 1 job :  IOPS=7433, BW=29.0MiB/s (30.4MB/s)
>   Rnd write,   4KB, QD=32, 4 jobs:  IOPS=20.3k, BW=79.1MiB/s (83.0MB/s)
>   Rnd write, 128KB,  QD=1, 1 job :  IOPS=203, BW=25.5MiB/s (26.7MB/s)
>   Rnd write, 128KB, QD=32, 1 job :  IOPS=1521, BW=190MiB/s (199MB/s)
>   Rnd write, 128KB, QD=32, 4 jobs:  IOPS=2927, BW=366MiB/s (384MB/s)
>   Seq read,  128KB,  QD=1, 1 job :  IOPS=207, BW=25.9MiB/s (27.2MB/s)
>   Seq read,  128KB, QD=32, 1 job :  IOPS=1538, BW=192MiB/s (202MB/s)
>   Seq read,  512KB,  QD=1, 1 job :  IOPS=183, BW=91.7MiB/s (96.2MB/s)
>   Seq read,  512KB, QD=32, 1 job :  IOPS=1356, BW=678MiB/s (711MB/s)
>   Seq read,    1MB, QD=32, 1 job :  IOPS=646, BW=647MiB/s (678MB/s)
>   Seq write, 128KB,  QD=1, 1 job :  IOPS=209, BW=26.1MiB/s (27.4MB/s)
>   Seq write, 128KB, QD=32, 1 job :  IOPS=1576, BW=197MiB/s (207MB/s)
>   Seq write, 512KB,  QD=1, 1 job :  IOPS=166, BW=83.3MiB/s (87.4MB/s)
>   Seq write, 512KB, QD=32, 1 job :  IOPS=891, BW=446MiB/s (468MB/s)
>   Seq write,   1MB, QD=32, 1 job :  IOPS=539, BW=540MiB/s (566MB/s)
>   Rnd rdwr, 4K..1MB, QD=8, 4 jobs:  IOPS=453, BW=228MiB/s (239MB/s)
>  IOPS=478, BW=241MiB/s (253MB/s)
> 
> claude-opus-4-8 was used to parse the crash dumps and IOMMU faults
> during testing to narrow down where issues where are how to fix them
> 
> Alistair Francis (2):
>   virtio_pci: Add a quirk to force DMA Map API for certain legacy
>     devices
>   scsi: Initial commit of VirtIO PCIe Endpoint Driver
> 
>  drivers/scsi/Kconfig               |   12 +
>  drivers/scsi/Makefile              |    1 +
>  drivers/scsi/virtio-scsi-pci-epf.c | 3099 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  drivers/virtio/virtio_pci_legacy.c |   27 +
>  drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c       |    7 +
>  include/linux/virtio.h             |    5 +
>  6 files changed, 3151 insertions(+)
>  create mode 100644 drivers/scsi/virtio-scsi-pci-epf.c
> 
> -- 
> 2.55.0
> 

+ linux-pci
+ PCI endpoint folks, Mani and Shunsuke have done a few presentations at
  various conferences about virtio/virtio-net/virtio-console + the PCI
  endpoint subsystem.