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

Tue Apr 24 08:40:29 UTC 2018

On 24/04/18 10:07, Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote:
> 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

Would this program use libgnttab in parallel? If yes how would the two
usage paths be combined (same applies to the separate driver, btw)? The
gntdev driver manages resources per file descriptor and libgnttab is
hiding the file descriptor it is using for a connection. Or would the
user program use only the new driver for communicating with the gntdev
driver? In this case it might be an option to extend the gntdev driver
to present a new device (e.g. "gntdmadev") for that purpose.

>>
>> 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)

I think in the end this really depends on how the complete solution
will look like. gntdev is a special wrapper for the gnttab driver.
In case the new dma-buf driver needs to use parts of gntdev I'd rather
have a new driver above gnttab ("gntuser"?) used by gntdev and dma-buf.

Juergen