Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 0/1] drm/xen-zcopy: Add Xen zero-copy helper DRM driver

Oleksandr Andrushchenko
2018-04-24T09:03:33Z

On 04/24/2018 11:40 AM, Juergen Gross wrote:
> On 24/04/18 10:07, Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote:
>> On 04/24/2018 10:51 AM, Juergen Gross wrote:
>>> On 24/04/18 07:43, Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote:
>>>> On 04/24/2018 01:41 AM, Boris Ostrovsky wrote:
>>>>> On 04/23/2018 08:10 AM, Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote:
>>>>>> On 04/23/2018 02:52 PM, Wei Liu wrote:
>>>>>>> On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 02:25:20PM +0300, Oleksandr Andrushchenko
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>        the gntdev.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I think this is generic enough that it could be implemented by a
>>>>>>>>>> device not tied to Xen. AFAICT the hyper_dma guys also wanted
>>>>>>>>>> something similar to this.
>>>>>>>>> You can't just wrap random userspace memory into a dma-buf. We've
>>>>>>>>> just had
>>>>>>>>> this discussion with kvm/qemu folks, who proposed just that, and
>>>>>>>>> after a
>>>>>>>>> bit of discussion they'll now try to have a driver which just
>>>>>>>>> wraps a
>>>>>>>>> memfd into a dma-buf.
>>>>>>>> So, we have to decide either we introduce a new driver
>>>>>>>> (say, under drivers/xen/xen-dma-buf) or extend the existing
>>>>>>>> gntdev/balloon to support dma-buf use-cases.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Can anybody from Xen community express their preference here?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Oleksandr talked to me on IRC about this, he said a few IOCTLs
>>>>>>> need to
>>>>>>> be added to either existing drivers or a new driver.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I went through this thread twice and skimmed through the relevant
>>>>>>> documents, but I couldn't see any obvious pros and cons for either
>>>>>>> approach. So I don't really have an opinion on this.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> But, assuming if implemented in existing drivers, those IOCTLs
>>>>>>> need to
>>>>>>> be added to different drivers, which means userspace program needs to
>>>>>>> write more code and get more handles, it would be slightly better to
>>>>>>> implement a new driver from that perspective.
>>>>>> If gntdev/balloon extension is still considered:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> All the IOCTLs will be in gntdev driver (in current xen-zcopy
>>>>>> terminology):
>>>>>>    - DRM_ICOTL_XEN_ZCOPY_DUMB_FROM_REFS
>>>>>>    - DRM_IOCTL_XEN_ZCOPY_DUMB_TO_REFS
>>>>>>    - DRM_IOCTL_XEN_ZCOPY_DUMB_WAIT_FREE
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Balloon driver extension, which is needed for contiguous/DMA
>>>>>> buffers, will be to provide new *kernel API*, no UAPI is needed.
>>>>>>
>>>>> So I am obviously a bit late to this thread, but why do you need to add
>>>>> new ioctls to gntdev and balloon? Doesn't this driver manage to do what
>>>>> you want without any extensions?
>>>> 1. I only (may) need to add IOCTLs to gntdev
>>>> 2. balloon driver needs to be extended, so it can allocate
>>>> contiguous (DMA) memory, not IOCTLs/UAPI here, all lives
>>>> in the kernel.
>>>> 3. The reason I need to extend gnttab with new IOCTLs is to
>>>> provide new functionality to create a dma-buf from grant references
>>>> and to produce grant references for a dma-buf. This is what I have as
>>>> UAPI
>>>> description for xen-zcopy driver:
>>>>
>>>> 1. DRM_IOCTL_XEN_ZCOPY_DUMB_FROM_REFS
>>>> This will create a DRM dumb buffer from grant references provided
>>>> by the frontend. The intended usage is:
>>>>    - Frontend
>>>>      - creates a dumb/display buffer and allocates memory
>>>>      - grants foreign access to the buffer pages
>>>>      - passes granted references to the backend
>>>>    - Backend
>>>>      - issues DRM_XEN_ZCOPY_DUMB_FROM_REFS ioctl to map
>>>>        granted references and create a dumb buffer
>>>>      - requests handle to fd conversion via DRM_IOCTL_PRIME_HANDLE_TO_FD
>>>>      - requests real HW driver/consumer to import the PRIME buffer with
>>>>        DRM_IOCTL_PRIME_FD_TO_HANDLE
>>>>      - uses handle returned by the real HW driver
>>>>    - at the end:
>>>>      o closes real HW driver's handle with DRM_IOCTL_GEM_CLOSE
>>>>      o closes zero-copy driver's handle with DRM_IOCTL_GEM_CLOSE
>>>>      o closes file descriptor of the exported buffer
>>>>
>>>> 2. DRM_IOCTL_XEN_ZCOPY_DUMB_TO_REFS
>>>> This will grant references to a dumb/display buffer's memory provided by
>>>> the
>>>> backend. The intended usage is:
>>>>    - Frontend
>>>>      - requests backend to allocate dumb/display buffer and grant
>>>> references
>>>>        to its pages
>>>>    - Backend
>>>>      - requests real HW driver to create a dumb with
>>>> DRM_IOCTL_MODE_CREATE_DUMB
>>>>      - requests handle to fd conversion via DRM_IOCTL_PRIME_HANDLE_TO_FD
>>>>      - requests zero-copy driver to import the PRIME buffer with
>>>>        DRM_IOCTL_PRIME_FD_TO_HANDLE
>>>>      - issues DRM_XEN_ZCOPY_DUMB_TO_REFS ioctl to
>>>>        grant references to the buffer's memory.
>>>>      - passes grant references to the frontend
>>>>   - at the end:
>>>>      - closes zero-copy driver's handle with DRM_IOCTL_GEM_CLOSE
>>>>      - closes real HW driver's handle with DRM_IOCTL_GEM_CLOSE
>>>>      - closes file descriptor of the imported buffer
>>>>
>>>> 3. DRM_XEN_ZCOPY_DUMB_WAIT_FREE
>>>> This will block until the dumb buffer with the wait handle provided be
>>>> freed:
>>>> this is needed for synchronization between frontend and backend in case
>>>> frontend provides grant references of the buffer via
>>>> DRM_XEN_ZCOPY_DUMB_FROM_REFS IOCTL and which must be released before
>>>> backend replies with XENDISPL_OP_DBUF_DESTROY response.
>>>> wait_handle must be the same value returned while calling
>>>> DRM_XEN_ZCOPY_DUMB_FROM_REFS IOCTL.
>>>>
>>>> So, as you can see the above functionality is not covered by the
>>>> existing UAPI
>>>> of the gntdev driver.
>>>> Now, if we change dumb -> dma-buf and remove DRM code (which is only a
>>>> wrapper
>>>> here on top of dma-buf) we get new driver for dma-buf for Xen.
>>>>
>>>> This is why I have 2 options here: either create a dedicated driver for
>>>> this
>>>> (e.g. re-work xen-zcopy to be DRM independent and put it under
>>>> drivers/xen/xen-dma-buf, for example) or extend the existing gntdev
>>>> driver
>>>> with the above UAPI + make changes to the balloon driver to provide
>>>> kernel
>>>> API for DMA buffer allocations.
>>> Which user component would use the new ioctls?
>> It is currently used by the display backend [1] and will
>> probably be used by the hyper-dmabuf frontend/backend
>> (Dongwon from Intel can provide more info on this).
>>> I'm asking because I'm not very fond of adding more linux specific
>>> functions to libgnttab which are not related to a specific Xen version,
>>> but to a kernel version.
>> Hm, I was not thinking about this UAPI to be added to libgnttab.
>> It seems it can be used directly w/o wrappers in user-space
> Would this program use libgnttab in parallel?
In case of the display backend - yes, for shared rings,
extracting grefs from displif protocol it uses gntdev via
helper library [1]
> If yes how would the two
> usage paths be combined (same applies to the separate driver, btw)? The
> gntdev driver manages resources per file descriptor and libgnttab is
> hiding the file descriptor it is using for a connection.
Ah, at the moment the UAPI was not used in parallel as there were
2 drivers for that: gntdev + xen-zcopy with different UAPIs.
But now, if we extend gntdev with the new API then you are rigth:
either libgnttab needs to be extended or that new part of the
gntdev UAPI needs to be open-coded by the backend
> Or would the
> user program use only the new driver for communicating with the gntdev
> driver? In this case it might be an option to extend the gntdev driver
> to present a new device (e.g. "gntdmadev") for that purpose.
No, it seems that libgnttab and this new driver's UAPI will be used
in parallel
>>> So doing this in a separate driver seems to be the better option in
>>> this regard.
>> Well, from maintenance POV it is easier for me to have it all in
>> a separate driver as all dma-buf related functionality will
>> reside at one place. This also means that no changes to existing
>> drivers will be needed (if it is ok to have ballooning in/out
>> code for DMA buffers (allocated with dma_alloc_xxx) not in the balloon
>> driver)
> I think in the end this really depends on how the complete solution
> will look like. gntdev is a special wrapper for the gnttab driver.
> In case the new dma-buf driver needs to use parts of gntdev I'd rather
> have a new driver above gnttab ("gntuser"?) used by gntdev and dma-buf.
The new driver doesn't use gntdev's existing API, but extends it,
e.g. by adding new ways to export/import grefs for a dma-buf and
manage dma-buf's kernel ops. Thus, gntdev, which already provides
UAPI, seems to be a good candidate for such an extension
>
> Juergen
[1] https://github.com/xen-troops/libxenbe