Re: [PATCH RFC 00/15] Add VFIO mediated device support and IMS support for the idxd driver.

Jason Gunthorpe
2020-04-21T23:54:55Z

On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 04:33:46PM -0700, Dave Jiang wrote:
> The actual code is independent of the stage 2 driver code submission that adds
> support for SVM, ENQCMD(S), PASID, and shared workqueues. This code series will
> support dedicated workqueue on a guest with no vIOMMU.
>
> A new device type "mdev" is introduced for the idxd driver. This allows the wq
> to be dedicated to the usage of a VFIO mediated device (mdev). Once the work
> queue (wq) is enabled, an uuid generated by the user can be added to the wq
> through the uuid sysfs attribute for the wq. After the association, a mdev can
> be created using this UUID. The mdev driver code will associate the uuid and
> setup the mdev on the driver side. When the create operation is successful, the
> uuid can be passed to qemu. When the guest boots up, it should discover a DSA
> device when doing PCI discovery.

I'm feeling really skeptical that adding all this PCI config space and
MMIO BAR emulation to the kernel just to cram this into a VFIO
interface is a good idea, that kind of stuff is much safer in
userspace.

Particularly since vfio is not really needed once a driver is using
the PASID stuff. We already have general code for drivers to use to
attach a PASID to a mm_struct - and using vfio while disabling all the
DMA/iommu config really seems like an abuse.

A /dev/idxd char dev that mmaps a bar page and links it to a PASID
seems a lot simpler and saner kernel wise.

> The mdev utilizes Interrupt Message Store or IMS[3] instead of MSIX for
> interrupts for the guest. This preserves MSIX for host usages and also allows a
> significantly larger number of interrupt vectors for guest usage.

I never did get a reply to my earlier remarks on the IMS patches.

The concept of a device specific addr/data table format for MSI is not
Intel specific. This should be general code. We have a device that can
use this kind of kernel capability today.

Jason