[PATCH v16 0/4] RDMA: Add dma-buf support

[John Hubbard]

On 2/4/21 10:44 AM, Alex Deucher wrote:
...
>>> The argument is that vram is a scarce resource, but I don't know if
>>> that is really the case these days.  At this point, we often have as
>>> much vram as system ram if not more.
>>
>> I thought the main argument was that GPU memory could move at any time
>> between the GPU and CPU and the DMA buf would always track its current
>> location?
> 
> I think the reason for that is that VRAM is scarce so we have to be
> able to move it around.  We don't enforce the same limitations for
> buffers in system memory.  We could just support pinning dma-bufs in
> vram like we do with system ram.  Maybe with some conditions, e.g.,
> p2p is possible, and the device has a large BAR so you aren't tying up
> the BAR window.
> 

Excellent. And yes, we are already building systems in which VRAM is
definitely not scarce, but on the other hand, those newer systems can
also handle GPU (and NIC) page faults, so not really an issue. For that,
we just need to enhance HMM so that it does peer to peer.

We also have some older hardware with large BAR1 apertures, specifically
for this sort of thing.

And again, for slightly older hardware, without pinning to VRAM there is
no way to use this solution here for peer-to-peer. So I'm glad to see that
so far you're not ruling out the pinning option.



thanks,
-- 
John Hubbard
NVIDIA