Re: Changing radeon KMS cs+gem ioctl to merge read & write domain

[Corbin Simpson <mostawesomedude@gmail.com>]

On 10/21/2009 03:49 PM, Jerome Glisse wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I think we should merge the read & write domain of radeon KMS
> into a single domains information. I don't think there is a
> good reason for separate read & write domain, we did copy intel
> model for that and intel use this mostly for cache coherency &
> cache flushing as far as i understand. We make no good use of
> this inside the kernel. In order to make this change less disruptive
> and easier to introduce i propose we keep libdrm-radeon api
> intact thus userspace xf86video-ati & mesa 3d driver doesn't
> need a single line patch to adapt. Attached is a proof of concept,
> a patch against libdrm which merge read & write domain and only
> use the read domain to communicate with the kernel. I am still
> in process of stress testing this patch but so far neither X
> or 3D had any glitches.
> 
> I want to take advantage of this change to the cs reloc to the
> following:
> struct drm_radeon_cs_reloc {
> »·······uint32_t»·······»·······handle;
> »·······uint32_t»·······»·······domains;
> »·······uint32_t»·······»·······unused;
> »·······uint32_t»·······»·······flags;
> };
> 
> With the following rules: a domain is a 4bit value (more than
> enough i believe). Userspace can then provide domain preference
> for each relocation. For instance :
> 0 Invalid|CPU
> 1 VRAM
> 2 GTT
> 
> domains = (VRAM << 0) | (GTT << 4)
> would mean try to place object in VRAM first, if not enough
> VRAM place it in GTT.
> 
> domains = (GTT << 0)
> object can only be in GTT
> ...
> 
> I believe this would be a lot more useful information that
> read|write domain. We would also now assume that userspace
> knows what it's doing inside a single submited cs and that
> userspace issue necessary flush if a bo is used in different
> way. Which is what the ddx does.
> 
> I believe the only argument in favor of read & write split
> is broken AGP chipset where GPU can't write to GART. So far
> we don't use this information to work around the issue,
> we don't even always test AGP writeback. Thus i believe this
> change won't impact current user. Note that i am working on
> code to work around bad AGP chipset (fallback to PCI GART
> for GPU write + detection of broken writeback).
> 
> I really think we should take advantage of being in staging
> driver to get the ioctl right before we have to freeze them.

No objections from me. If you have further ioctl changes, raising them
sooner rather than later would be *greatly* appreciated since I'm
probably the only person touching them in Gallium.

~ C.