[RFC PATCH] PCI/VGA: Look at all PCI display devices in VGA arbiter

Thomas Zimmermann tzimmermann at suse.de
Tue Jun 10 13:35:36 UTC 2025


Hi

Am 09.06.25 um 04:24 schrieb Mario Limonciello:
> From: Mario Limonciello <mario.limonciello at amd.com>
>
> On an A+N mobile system the APU is not being selected by some desktop
> environments for any rendering tasks. This is because the neither GPU
> is being treated as "boot_vga" but that is what some environments use
> to select a GPU [1].
>
> The VGA arbiter driver only looks at devices that report as PCI display
> VGA class devices. Neither GPU on the system is a display VGA class
> device:
>
> c5:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 2db9 (rev a1)
> c6:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Device 150e (rev d1)

My understanding of vgaarb is that it manages concurrent usage of the 
fixed VGA I/O ports. So are these actually VGA devices? I'm concerned 
about vgaarb handling devices that aren't VGA and possible side effects 
of that.

As a side note, there's also video_is_primary_device(), which we use for 
fbcon and which also uses vga_default_device() on x86. [1] This helper 
should likely return the same value as sysfs' boot_vga attribute.

[1] https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.15.1/C/ident/video_is_primary_device

>
> So neither device gets the boot_vga sysfs file. The vga_is_boot_device()
> function already has some handling for integrated GPUs by looking at the
> ACPI HID entries, so if all PCI display class devices are looked at it
> actually can detect properly with this device ordering.  However if there
> is a different ordering it could flag the wrong device.
>
> Modify the VGA arbiter code and matching sysfs file entries to examine all
> PCI display class devices. After every device is added to the arbiter list
> make a pass on all devices and explicitly check whether one is integrated.
>
> This will cause all GPUs to gain a `boot_vga` file, but the correct device
> (APU in this case) will now show `1` and the incorrect device shows `0`.
> Userspace then picks the right device as well.
>
> Link: https://github.com/robherring/libpciaccess/commit/b2838fb61c3542f107014b285cbda097acae1e12 [1]
> Signed-off-by: Mario Limonciello <mario.limonciello at amd.com>
> ---
>   drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c |  2 +-
>   drivers/pci/vgaarb.c    | 53 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------
>   include/linux/pci.h     | 15 ++++++++++++
>   3 files changed, 50 insertions(+), 20 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c b/drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c
> index 268c69daa4d57..c314ee1b3f9ac 100644
> --- a/drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c
> +++ b/drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c
> @@ -1707,7 +1707,7 @@ static umode_t pci_dev_attrs_are_visible(struct kobject *kobj,
>   	struct device *dev = kobj_to_dev(kobj);
>   	struct pci_dev *pdev = to_pci_dev(dev);
>   
> -	if (a == &dev_attr_boot_vga.attr && pci_is_vga(pdev))
> +	if (a == &dev_attr_boot_vga.attr && pci_is_display(pdev))
>   		return a->mode;
>   
>   	return 0;
> diff --git a/drivers/pci/vgaarb.c b/drivers/pci/vgaarb.c
> index 78748e8d2dbae..8281144747487 100644
> --- a/drivers/pci/vgaarb.c
> +++ b/drivers/pci/vgaarb.c
> @@ -139,7 +139,7 @@ void vga_set_default_device(struct pci_dev *pdev)
>   {
>   	if (vga_default == pdev)
>   		return;
> -
> +	vgaarb_info(&pdev->dev, "selecting as VGA boot device\n");

vgaarb_dbg() please.

>   	pci_dev_put(vga_default);
>   	vga_default = pci_dev_get(pdev);
>   }
> @@ -676,9 +676,9 @@ static bool vga_is_boot_device(struct vga_device *vgadev)
>   	}
>   
>   	/*
> -	 * Vgadev has neither IO nor MEM enabled.  If we haven't found any
> -	 * other VGA devices, it is the best candidate so far.
> -	 */
> +	* Vgadev has neither IO nor MEM enabled.  If we haven't found any
> +	* other VGA devices, it is the best candidate so far.
> +	*/

This should be a separate patch.

Best regards
Thomas

>   	if (!boot_vga)
>   		return true;
>   
> @@ -751,6 +751,31 @@ static void vga_arbiter_check_bridge_sharing(struct vga_device *vgadev)
>   		vgaarb_info(&vgadev->pdev->dev, "no bridge control possible\n");
>   }
>   
> +static
> +void vga_arbiter_select_default_device(void)
> +{
> +	struct pci_dev *candidate = vga_default_device();
> +	struct vga_device *vgadev;
> +
> +	list_for_each_entry(vgadev, &vga_list, list) {
> +		if (vga_is_boot_device(vgadev)) {
> +			/* check if one is an integrated GPU, use that if so */
> +			if (candidate) {
> +				if (vga_arb_integrated_gpu(&candidate->dev))
> +					break;
> +				if (vga_arb_integrated_gpu(&vgadev->pdev->dev)) {
> +					candidate = vgadev->pdev;
> +					break;
> +				}
> +			} else
> +				candidate = vgadev->pdev;
> +		}
> +	}
> +
> +	if (candidate)
> +		vga_set_default_device(candidate);
> +}
> +
>   /*
>    * Currently, we assume that the "initial" setup of the system is not sane,
>    * that is, we come up with conflicting devices and let the arbiter's
> @@ -816,13 +841,6 @@ static bool vga_arbiter_add_pci_device(struct pci_dev *pdev)
>   		bus = bus->parent;
>   	}
>   
> -	if (vga_is_boot_device(vgadev)) {
> -		vgaarb_info(&pdev->dev, "setting as boot VGA device%s\n",
> -			    vga_default_device() ?
> -			    " (overriding previous)" : "");
> -		vga_set_default_device(pdev);
> -	}
> -
>   	vga_arbiter_check_bridge_sharing(vgadev);
>   
>   	/* Add to the list */
> @@ -833,6 +851,7 @@ static bool vga_arbiter_add_pci_device(struct pci_dev *pdev)
>   		vga_iostate_to_str(vgadev->owns),
>   		vga_iostate_to_str(vgadev->locks));
>   
> +	vga_arbiter_select_default_device();
>   	spin_unlock_irqrestore(&vga_lock, flags);
>   	return true;
>   fail:
> @@ -1499,8 +1518,8 @@ static int pci_notify(struct notifier_block *nb, unsigned long action,
>   
>   	vgaarb_dbg(dev, "%s\n", __func__);
>   
> -	/* Only deal with VGA class devices */
> -	if (!pci_is_vga(pdev))
> +	/* Only deal with display devices */
> +	if (!pci_is_display(pdev))
>   		return 0;
>   
>   	/*
> @@ -1548,12 +1567,8 @@ static int __init vga_arb_device_init(void)
>   
>   	/* Add all VGA class PCI devices by default */
>   	pdev = NULL;
> -	while ((pdev =
> -		pci_get_subsys(PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID,
> -			       PCI_ANY_ID, pdev)) != NULL) {
> -		if (pci_is_vga(pdev))
> -			vga_arbiter_add_pci_device(pdev);
> -	}
> +	while ((pdev = pci_get_base_class(PCI_BASE_CLASS_DISPLAY, pdev)))
> +		vga_arbiter_add_pci_device(pdev);
>   
>   	pr_info("loaded\n");
>   	return rc;
> diff --git a/include/linux/pci.h b/include/linux/pci.h
> index 05e68f35f3923..e77754e43c629 100644
> --- a/include/linux/pci.h
> +++ b/include/linux/pci.h
> @@ -744,6 +744,21 @@ static inline bool pci_is_vga(struct pci_dev *pdev)
>   	return false;
>   }
>   
> +/**
> + * pci_is_display - Check if a PCI device is a display controller
> + * @pdev: Pointer to the PCI device structure
> + *
> + * This function determines whether the given PCI device corresponds
> + * to a display controller. Display controllers are typically used
> + * for graphical output and are identified based on their class code.
> + *
> + * Return: true if the PCI device is a display controller, false otherwise.
> + */
> +static inline bool pci_is_display(struct pci_dev *pdev)
> +{
> +	return (pdev->class >> 16) == PCI_BASE_CLASS_DISPLAY;
> +}
> +
>   #define for_each_pci_bridge(dev, bus)				\
>   	list_for_each_entry(dev, &bus->devices, bus_list)	\
>   		if (!pci_is_bridge(dev)) {} else

-- 
--
Thomas Zimmermann
Graphics Driver Developer
SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH
Frankenstrasse 146, 90461 Nuernberg, Germany
GF: Ivo Totev, Andrew Myers, Andrew McDonald, Boudien Moerman
HRB 36809 (AG Nuernberg)



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