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

[Jason Gunthorpe]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 08:08:46PM +0000, Xiong, Jianxin wrote:
> > From: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg at ziepe.ca>
> > Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2020 12:17 PM
> > 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>; dri-
> > devel at lists.freedesktop.org
> > 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.
> > 
> > Needed for what? The PFN of the DEVICE_PRIVATE pages is useless for anything.
> 
> Hmm. I thought the pfn corresponds to the address in the BAR range. I could be
> wrong here. 

No, DEVICE_PRIVATE is a dummy pfn to empty address space.

Jason