[PATCH v2 00/25] AMDKFD kernel driver

[Oded Gabbay]

On 21/07/14 21:59, Jerome Glisse wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 09:36:44PM +0300, Oded Gabbay wrote:
>> On 21/07/14 21:14, Jerome Glisse wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 08:42:58PM +0300, Oded Gabbay wrote:
>>>> On 21/07/14 18:54, Jerome Glisse wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 05:12:06PM +0300, Oded Gabbay wrote:
>>>>>> On 21/07/14 16:39, Christian König wrote:
>>>>>>> Am 21.07.2014 14:36, schrieb Oded Gabbay:
>>>>>>>> On 20/07/14 20:46, Jerome Glisse wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 04:57:25PM +0300, Oded Gabbay wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> Forgot to cc mailing list on cover letter. Sorry.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> As a continuation to the existing discussion, here is a v2 patch series
>>>>>>>>>> restructured with a cleaner history and no totally-different-early-versions
>>>>>>>>>> of the code.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Instead of 83 patches, there are now a total of 25 patches, where 5 of them
>>>>>>>>>> are modifications to radeon driver and 18 of them include only amdkfd code.
>>>>>>>>>> There is no code going away or even modified between patches, only added.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> The driver was renamed from radeon_kfd to amdkfd and moved to reside under
>>>>>>>>>> drm/radeon/amdkfd. This move was done to emphasize the fact that this driver
>>>>>>>>>> is an AMD-only driver at this point. Having said that, we do foresee a
>>>>>>>>>> generic hsa framework being implemented in the future and in that case, we
>>>>>>>>>> will adjust amdkfd to work within that framework.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> As the amdkfd driver should support multiple AMD gfx drivers, we want to
>>>>>>>>>> keep it as a seperate driver from radeon. Therefore, the amdkfd code is
>>>>>>>>>> contained in its own folder. The amdkfd folder was put under the radeon
>>>>>>>>>> folder because the only AMD gfx driver in the Linux kernel at this point
>>>>>>>>>> is the radeon driver. Having said that, we will probably need to move it
>>>>>>>>>> (maybe to be directly under drm) after we integrate with additional AMD gfx
>>>>>>>>>> drivers.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> For people who like to review using git, the v2 patch set is located at:
>>>>>>>>>> http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~gabbayo/linux/log/?h=kfd-next-3.17-v2
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Written by Oded Gabbayh <oded.gabbay at amd.com>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> So quick comments before i finish going over all patches. There is many
>>>>>>>>> things that need more documentation espacialy as of right now there is
>>>>>>>>> no userspace i can go look at.
>>>>>>>> So quick comments on some of your questions but first of all, thanks for the
>>>>>>>> time you dedicated to review the code.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> There few show stopper, biggest one is gpu memory pinning this is a big
>>>>>>>>> no, that would need serious arguments for any hope of convincing me on
>>>>>>>>> that side.
>>>>>>>> We only do gpu memory pinning for kernel objects. There are no userspace
>>>>>>>> objects that are pinned on the gpu memory in our driver. If that is the case,
>>>>>>>> is it still a show stopper ?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The kernel objects are:
>>>>>>>> - pipelines (4 per device)
>>>>>>>> - mqd per hiq (only 1 per device)
>>>>>>>> - mqd per userspace queue. On KV, we support up to 1K queues per process, for
>>>>>>>> a total of 512K queues. Each mqd is 151 bytes, but the allocation is done in
>>>>>>>> 256 alignment. So total *possible* memory is 128MB
>>>>>>>> - kernel queue (only 1 per device)
>>>>>>>> - fence address for kernel queue
>>>>>>>> - runlists for the CP (1 or 2 per device)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The main questions here are if it's avoid able to pin down the memory and if the
>>>>>>> memory is pinned down at driver load, by request from userspace or by anything
>>>>>>> else.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> As far as I can see only the "mqd per userspace queue" might be a bit
>>>>>>> questionable, everything else sounds reasonable.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Christian.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Most of the pin downs are done on device initialization.
>>>>>> The "mqd per userspace" is done per userspace queue creation. However, as I
>>>>>> said, it has an upper limit of 128MB on KV, and considering the 2G local
>>>>>> memory, I think it is OK.
>>>>>> The runlists are also done on userspace queue creation/deletion, but we only
>>>>>> have 1 or 2 runlists per device, so it is not that bad.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2G local memory ? You can not assume anything on userside configuration some
>>>>> one might build an hsa computer with 512M and still expect a functioning
>>>>> desktop.
>>>> First of all, I'm only considering Kaveri computer, not "hsa" computer.
>>>> Second, I would imagine we can build some protection around it, like
>>>> checking total local memory and limit number of queues based on some
>>>> percentage of that total local memory. So, if someone will have only
>>>> 512M, he will be able to open less queues.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I need to go look into what all this mqd is for, what it does and what it is
>>>>> about. But pinning is really bad and this is an issue with userspace command
>>>>> scheduling an issue that obviously AMD fails to take into account in design
>>>>> phase.
>>>> Maybe, but that is the H/W design non-the-less. We can't very well
>>>> change the H/W.
>>>
>>> You can not change the hardware but it is not an excuse to allow bad design to
>>> sneak in software to work around that. So i would rather penalize bad hardware
>>> design and have command submission in the kernel, until AMD fix its hardware to
>>> allow proper scheduling by the kernel and proper control by the kernel. 
>> I'm sorry but I do *not* think this is a bad design. S/W scheduling in
>> the kernel can not, IMO, scale well to 100K queues and 10K processes.
> 
> I am not advocating for having kernel decide down to the very last details. I am
> advocating for kernel being able to preempt at any time and be able to decrease
> or increase user queue priority so overall kernel is in charge of resources
> management and it can handle rogue client in proper fashion.
> 
>>
>>> Because really where we want to go is having GPU closer to a CPU in term of scheduling
>>> capacity and once we get there we want the kernel to always be able to take over
>>> and do whatever it wants behind process back.
>> Who do you refer to when you say "we" ? AFAIK, the hw scheduling
>> direction is where AMD is now and where it is heading in the future.
>> That doesn't preclude the option to allow the kernel to take over and do
>> what he wants. I agree that in KV we have a problem where we can't do a
>> mid-wave preemption, so theoretically, a long running compute kernel can
>> make things messy, but in Carrizo, we will have this ability. Having
>> said that, it will only be through the CP H/W scheduling. So AMD is
>> _not_ going to abandon H/W scheduling. You can dislike it, but this is
>> the situation.
> 
> We was for the overall Linux community but maybe i should not pretend to talk
> for anyone interested in having a common standard.
> 
> My point is that current hardware do not have approriate hardware support for
> preemption hence, current hardware should use ioctl to schedule job and AMD
> should think a bit more on commiting to a design and handwaving any hardware
> short coming as something that can be work around in the software. The pinning
> thing is broken by design, only way to work around it is through kernel cmd
> queue scheduling that's a fact.

> 
> Once hardware support proper preemption and allows to move around/evict buffer
> use on behalf of userspace command queue then we can allow userspace scheduling
> but until then my personnal opinion is that it should not be allowed and that
> people will have to pay the ioctl price which i proved to be small, because
> really if you 100K queue each with one job, i would not expect that all those
> 100K job will complete in less time than it takes to execute an ioctl ie by
> even if you do not have the ioctl delay what ever you schedule will have to
> wait on previously submited jobs.

But Jerome, the core problem still remains in effect, even with your
suggestion. If an application, either via userspace queue or via ioctl,
submits a long-running kernel, than the CPU in general can't stop the
GPU from running it. And if that kernel does while(1); than that's it,
game's over, and no matter how you submitted the work. So I don't really
see the big advantage in your proposal. Only in CZ we can stop this wave
(by CP H/W scheduling only). What are you saying is basically I won't
allow people to use compute on Linux KV system because it _may_ get the
system stuck.

So even if I really wanted to, and I may agree with you theoretically on
that, I can't fulfill your desire to make the "kernel being able to
preempt at any time and be able to decrease or increase user queue
priority so overall kernel is in charge of resources management and it
can handle rogue client in proper fashion". Not in KV, and I guess not
in CZ as well.

	Oded

> 
>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> It might be better to add a drivers/gpu/drm/amd directory and add common
>>>>>>>>> stuff there.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Given that this is not intended to be final HSA api AFAICT then i would
>>>>>>>>> say this far better to avoid the whole kfd module and add ioctl to radeon.
>>>>>>>>> This would avoid crazy communication btw radeon and kfd.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The whole aperture business needs some serious explanation. Especialy as
>>>>>>>>> you want to use userspace address there is nothing to prevent userspace
>>>>>>>>> program from allocating things at address you reserve for lds, scratch,
>>>>>>>>> ... only sane way would be to move those lds, scratch inside the virtual
>>>>>>>>> address reserved for kernel (see kernel memory map).
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The whole business of locking performance counter for exclusive per process
>>>>>>>>> access is a big NO. Which leads me to the questionable usefullness of user
>>>>>>>>> space command ring.
>>>>>>>> That's like saying: "Which leads me to the questionable usefulness of HSA". I
>>>>>>>> find it analogous to a situation where a network maintainer nacking a driver
>>>>>>>> for a network card, which is slower than a different network card. Doesn't
>>>>>>>> seem reasonable this situation is would happen. He would still put both the
>>>>>>>> drivers in the kernel because people want to use the H/W and its features. So,
>>>>>>>> I don't think this is a valid reason to NACK the driver.
>>>>>
>>>>> Let me rephrase, drop the the performance counter ioctl and modulo memory pinning
>>>>> i see no objection. In other word, i am not NACKING whole patchset i am NACKING
>>>>> the performance ioctl.
>>>>>
>>>>> Again this is another argument for round trip to the kernel. As inside kernel you
>>>>> could properly do exclusive gpu counter access accross single user cmd buffer
>>>>> execution.
>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I only see issues with that. First and foremost i would
>>>>>>>>> need to see solid figures that kernel ioctl or syscall has a higher an
>>>>>>>>> overhead that is measurable in any meaning full way against a simple
>>>>>>>>> function call. I know the userspace command ring is a big marketing features
>>>>>>>>> that please ignorant userspace programmer. But really this only brings issues
>>>>>>>>> and for absolutely not upside afaict.
>>>>>>>> Really ? You think that doing a context switch to kernel space, with all its
>>>>>>>> overhead, is _not_ more expansive than just calling a function in userspace
>>>>>>>> which only puts a buffer on a ring and writes a doorbell ?
>>>>>
>>>>> I am saying the overhead is not that big and it probably will not matter in most
>>>>> usecase. For instance i did wrote the most useless kernel module that add two
>>>>> number through an ioctl (http://people.freedesktop.org/~glisse/adder.tar) and
>>>>> it takes ~0.35microseconds with ioctl while function is ~0.025microseconds so
>>>>> ioctl is 13 times slower.
>>>>>
>>>>> Now if there is enough data that shows that a significant percentage of jobs
>>>>> submited to the GPU will take less that 0.35microsecond then yes userspace
>>>>> scheduling does make sense. But so far all we have is handwaving with no data
>>>>> to support any facts.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Now if we want to schedule from userspace than you will need to do something
>>>>> about the pinning, something that gives control to kernel so that kernel can
>>>>> unpin when it wants and move object when it wants no matter what userspace is
>>>>> doing.
>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
> 
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