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

Tue Apr 24 08:07:21 UTC 2018

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
>
> 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)
>
> Juergen
[1] https://github.com/xen-troops/displ_be