[RFC PATCH v2 0/3] RDMA: add dma-buf support

Wed Jul 1 12:07:44 UTC 2020

Either my mailer ate half the thread or it's still stuck somewhere, so
jumping in the middle a bit.

On Wed, Jul 01, 2020 at 11:03:06AM +0200, Christian König wrote:
> Am 30.06.20 um 20:46 schrieb Xiong, Jianxin:
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg at ziepe.ca>
> > > Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2020 10:35 AM
> > > To: Xiong, Jianxin <jianxin.xiong at intel.com>
> > > Cc: linux-rdma at vger.kernel.org; Doug Ledford <dledford at redhat.com>; Sumit Semwal <sumit.semwal at linaro.org>; Leon Romanovsky
> > > <leon at kernel.org>; Vetter, Daniel <daniel.vetter at intel.com>; Christian Koenig <christian.koenig at amd.com>
> > > Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v2 0/3] RDMA: add dma-buf support
> > > 
> > > On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 05:21:33PM +0000, Xiong, Jianxin wrote:
> > > > > > Heterogeneous Memory Management (HMM) utilizes
> > > > > > mmu_interval_notifier and ZONE_DEVICE to support shared virtual
> > > > > > address space and page migration between system memory and device
> > > > > > memory. HMM doesn't support pinning device memory because pages
> > > > > > located on device must be able to migrate to system memory when
> > > > > > accessed by CPU. Peer-to-peer access is possible if the peer can
> > > > > > handle page fault. For RDMA, that means the NIC must support on-demand paging.
> > > > > peer-peer access is currently not possible with hmm_range_fault().
> > > > Currently hmm_range_fault() always sets the cpu access flag and device
> > > > private pages are migrated to the system RAM in the fault handler.
> > > > However, it's possible to have a modified code flow to keep the device
> > > > private page info for use with peer to peer access.
> > > Sort of, but only within the same device, RDMA or anything else generic can't reach inside a DEVICE_PRIVATE and extract anything useful.
> > But pfn is supposed to be all that is needed.
> > 
> > > > > So.. this patch doesn't really do anything new? We could just make a MR against the DMA buf mmap and get to the same place?
> > > > That's right, the patch alone is just half of the story. The
> > > > functionality depends on availability of dma-buf exporter that can pin
> > > > the device memory.
> > > Well, what do you want to happen here? The RDMA parts are reasonable, but I don't want to add new functionality without a purpose - the
> > > other parts need to be settled out first.
> > At the RDMA side, we mainly want to check if the changes are acceptable. For example,
> > the part about adding 'fd' to the device ops and the ioctl interface. All the previous
> > comments are very helpful for us to refine the patch so that we can be ready when
> > GPU side support becomes available.
> > 
> > > The need for the dynamic mapping support for even the current DMA Buf hacky P2P users is really too bad. Can you get any GPU driver to
> > > support non-dynamic mapping?
> > We are working on direct direction.
> > 
> > > > > > migrate to system RAM. This is due to the lack of knowledge about
> > > > > > whether the importer can perform peer-to-peer access and the lack
> > > > > > of resource limit control measure for GPU. For the first part, the
> > > > > > latest dma-buf driver has a peer-to-peer flag for the importer,
> > > > > > but the flag is currently tied to dynamic mapping support, which
> > > > > > requires on-demand paging support from the NIC to work.
> > > > > ODP for DMA buf?
> > > > Right.
> > > Hum. This is not actually so hard to do. The whole dma buf proposal would make a lot more sense if the 'dma buf MR' had to be the
> > > dynamic kind and the driver had to provide the faulting. It would not be so hard to change mlx5 to be able to work like this, perhaps. (the
> > > locking might be a bit tricky though)
> > The main issue is that not all NICs support ODP.
> 
> You don't need on-demand paging support from the NIC for dynamic mapping to
> work.
> 
> All you need is the ability to stop wait for ongoing accesses to end and
> make sure that new ones grab a new mapping.

So having no clue about rdma myself much, this sounds rather interesting.
Sure it would result in immediately re-acquiring the pages, but that's
also really all we need to be able to move buffers around on the gpu side.
And with dma_resv_lock there's no livelock risk if the NIC immediately
starts a kthread/work_struct which reacquires all the dma-buf and
everything else it needs. Plus also with the full ww_mutex deadlock
backoff dance there's no locking issues with having to acquire an entire
pile of dma_resv_lock, that's natively supported (gpus very much need to
be able to lock arbitrary set of buffers).

And I think if that would allow us to avoid the entire "avoid random
drivers pinning dma-buf into vram" discussions, much better and quicker to
land something like that.

I guess the big question is going to be how to fit this into rdma, since
the ww_mutex deadlock backoff dance needs to be done at a fairly high
level. For gpu drivers it's always done at the top level ioctl entry
point.

> Apart from that this is a rather interesting work.
> 
> Regards,
> Christian.
> 
> > 
> > > > > > There are a few possible ways to address these issues, such as
> > > > > > decoupling peer-to-peer flag from dynamic mapping, allowing more
> > > > > > leeway for individual drivers to make the pinning decision and
> > > > > > adding GPU resource limit control via cgroup. We would like to get
> > > > > > comments on this patch series with the assumption that device
> > > > > > memory pinning via dma-buf is supported by some GPU drivers, and
> > > > > > at the same time welcome open discussions on how to address the
> > > > > > aforementioned issues as well as GPU-NIC peer-to-peer access solutions in general.
> > > > > These seem like DMA buf problems, not RDMA problems, why are you
> > > > > asking these questions with a RDMA patch set? The usual DMA buf people are not even Cc'd here.
> > > > The intention is to have people from both RDMA and DMA buffer side to
> > > > comment. Sumit Semwal is the DMA buffer maintainer according to the
> > > > MAINTAINERS file. I agree more people could be invited to the discussion.
> > > > Just added Christian Koenig to the cc-list.

MAINTAINERS also says to cc and entire pile of mailing lists, where the
usual suspects (including Christian and me) hang around. Is that the
reason I got only like half the thread here?

For next time around, really include everyone relevant here please.
-Daniel

> > > Would be good to have added the drm lists too
> > Thanks, cc'd dri-devel here, and will also do the same for the previous part of the thread.
> > 
> > > > If the umem_description you mentioned is for information used to
> > > > create the umem (e.g. a structure for all the parameters), then this would work better.
> > > It would make some more sense, and avoid all these weird EOPNOTSUPPS.
> > Good, thanks for the suggestion.
> > 
> > > Jason
> 
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-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
http://blog.ffwll.ch