Introduce a new helper framework for buffer synchronization

[Inki Dae]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: linux-fbdev-owner at vger.kernel.org [mailto:linux-fbdev-
> owner at vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of Maarten Lankhorst
> Sent: Monday, May 13, 2013 8:41 PM
> To: Inki Dae
> Cc: 'Rob Clark'; 'Daniel Vetter'; 'DRI mailing list'; linux-arm-
> kernel at lists.infradead.org; linux-media at vger.kernel.org; 'linux-fbdev';
> 'Kyungmin Park'; 'myungjoo.ham'; 'YoungJun Cho'
> Subject: Re: Introduce a new helper framework for buffer synchronization
> 
> Op 13-05-13 13:24, Inki Dae schreef:
> >> and can be solved with userspace locking primitives. No need for the
> >> kernel to get involved.
> >>
> > Yes, that is how we have synchronized buffer between CPU and DMA device
> > until now without buffer synchronization mechanism. I thought that it's
> best
> > to make user not considering anything: user can access a buffer
> regardless
> > of any DMA device controlling and the buffer synchronization is
> performed in
> > kernel level. Moreover, I think we could optimize graphics and
> multimedia
> > hardware performance because hardware can do more works: one thread
> accesses
> > a shared buffer and the other controls DMA device with the shared buffer
> in
> > parallel. Thus, we could avoid sequential processing and that is my
> > intention. Aren't you think about that we could improve hardware
> utilization
> > with such way or other? of course, there could be better way.
> >
> If you don't want to block the hardware the only option is to allocate a
> temp bo and blit to/from it using the hardware.
> OpenGL already does that when you want to read back, because otherwise the
> entire pipeline can get stalled.
> The overhead of command submission for that shouldn't be high, if it is
> you should really try to optimize that first
> before coming up with this crazy scheme.
> 

I have considered all devices sharing buffer with CPU; multimedia, display
controller and graphics devices (including GPU). And we could provide
easy-to-use user interfaces for buffer synchronization. Of course, the
proposed user interfaces may be so ugly yet but at least, I think we need
something else for it.

> In that case you still wouldn't give userspace control over the fences. I
> don't see any way that can end well.
> What if userspace never signals? What if userspace gets killed by oom
> killer. Who keeps track of that?
> 

In all cases, all kernel resources to user fence will be released by kernel
once the fence is timed out: never signaling and process killing by oom
killer makes the fence timed out. And if we use mmap mechanism you mentioned
before, I think user resource could also be freed properly.

Thanks,
Inki Dae

> ~Maarten
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