[Intel-gfx] [PATCH 02/55] drm/i915: Reserve ring buffer space for i915_add_request() commands

[Daniel Vetter]

On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 12:38:01PM +0100, John Harrison wrote:
> On 22/06/2015 21:12, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> >On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 05:34:12PM +0100, John.C.Harrison at Intel.com wrote:
> >>From: John Harrison <John.C.Harrison at Intel.com>
> >>
> >>It is a bad idea for i915_add_request() to fail. The work will already have been
> >>send to the ring and will be processed, but there will not be any tracking or
> >>management of that work.
> >>
> >>The only way the add request call can fail is if it can't write its epilogue
> >>commands to the ring (cache flushing, seqno updates, interrupt signalling). The
> >>reasons for that are mostly down to running out of ring buffer space and the
> >>problems associated with trying to get some more. This patch prevents that
> >>situation from happening in the first place.
> >>
> >>When a request is created, it marks sufficient space as reserved for the
> >>epilogue commands. Thus guaranteeing that by the time the epilogue is written,
> >>there will be plenty of space for it. Note that a ring_begin() call is required
> >>to actually reserve the space (and do any potential waiting). However, that is
> >>not currently done at request creation time. This is because the ring_begin()
> >>code can allocate a request. Hence calling begin() from the request allocation
> >>code would lead to infinite recursion! Later patches in this series remove the
> >>need for begin() to do the allocate. At that point, it becomes safe for the
> >>allocate to call begin() and really reserve the space.
> >>
> >>Until then, there is a potential for insufficient space to be available at the
> >>point of calling i915_add_request(). However, that would only be in the case
> >>where the request was created and immediately submitted without ever calling
> >>ring_begin() and adding any work to that request. Which should never happen. And
> >>even if it does, and if that request happens to fall down the tiny window of
> >>opportunity for failing due to being out of ring space then does it really
> >>matter because the request wasn't doing anything in the first place?
> >>
> >>v2: Updated the 'reserved space too small' warning to include the offending
> >>sizes. Added a 'cancel' operation to clean up when a request is abandoned. Added
> >>re-initialisation of tracking state after a buffer wrap to keep the sanity
> >>checks accurate.
> >>
> >>v3: Incremented the reserved size to accommodate Ironlake (after finally
> >>managing to run on an ILK system). Also fixed missing wrap code in LRC mode.
> >>
> >>v4: Added extra comment and removed duplicate WARN (feedback from Tomas).
> >>
> >>v5: Re-write of wrap handling to prevent unnecessary early wraps (feedback from
> >>Daniel Vetter).
> >This didn't actually implement what I suggested (wrapping is the worst
> >case, hence skipping the check for that is breaking the sanity check) and
> >so changed the patch from "correct, but a bit fragile" to broken. I've
> >merged the previous version instead.
> >-Daniel
> I'm confused. I thought your main issue was the early wrapping not the
> sanity check. The check is to ensure that the reservation is large enough to
> cover all the commands written during request submission. That should not be
> affected by whether a wrap occurs or not. Wrapping does not magically add an
> extra bunch of dwords to the emit_request() call. Whereas making the check
> work with the wrap condition requires adding in extra tracking state of
> exactly where the wrap occurred. That is extra code that only exists to
> catch something in the very rare case which should already have been caught
> in the very common case. I.e. if your reserved size is too small then you
> will hit the warning on every batch buffer submission.

The problem is that if you allow a wrap in the reserve size then the
ringspace requirements are bigger than if you don't wrap. And since the
add request is split up into many intel_ring_begin that's possible. Hence
if you allow wrapping in the reserved space, then the most important case
for the debug check is to make sure that it catches any kind of
reservation overflow while wrapping. The not-wrapped case is probably the
boring one.

And indeed eventually we should overflow since according to your comment
the worst case add request on ilk is 136 dwords. And the largest
intel_ring_begin in there is 32 dwords, which means at most we'll throw
away 31 dwords when wrapping. Which means the 160 dwords of reservation
are not enough since we'd need 167 dwords of space for the worst case. But
since the space_end debug check was a no-op for the wrapped case you won't
catch this one.

Wrt keeping track of wrapping while the reservation is in use, the
following should do that without any need of additional tracking:


	int used_size = ringbuf->tail - ringbuf->reserved_tail;

	if (used_size < 0)
		used_size += ringbuf->size;

	WARN(used_size < ringbuf->reserved_size,
	     "request reserved size too small: %d vs %d!\n",
	     used_size, ringbuf->reserved_size);

I was mistaken that you can reuse __intel_ring_space (since that has
slightly different requirements), but this gives you a nicely localized
check for reservation overflow which works even when you wrap. Ofc it
won't work if an add_request is bigger than the entire ring, but that's
impossible anyway since we can at most reserve ringbuf->size -
I915_RING_FREE_SPACE.

Or do I still miss something?
-Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
http://blog.ffwll.ch