[Intel-gfx] [RFC v3 1/3] drm/doc/rfc: VM_BIND feature design document

Niranjana Vishwanathapura niranjana.vishwanathapura at intel.com
Tue Jun 7 18:18:11 UTC 2022


On Tue, Jun 07, 2022 at 12:12:03PM -0500, Jason Ekstrand wrote:
>   On Fri, Jun 3, 2022 at 6:52 PM Niranjana Vishwanathapura
>   <niranjana.vishwanathapura at intel.com> wrote:
>
>     On Fri, Jun 03, 2022 at 10:20:25AM +0300, Lionel Landwerlin wrote:
>     >   On 02/06/2022 23:35, Jason Ekstrand wrote:
>     >
>     >     On Thu, Jun 2, 2022 at 3:11 PM Niranjana Vishwanathapura
>     >     <niranjana.vishwanathapura at intel.com> wrote:
>     >
>     >       On Wed, Jun 01, 2022 at 01:28:36PM -0700, Matthew Brost wrote:
>     >       >On Wed, Jun 01, 2022 at 05:25:49PM +0300, Lionel Landwerlin
>     wrote:
>     >       >> On 17/05/2022 21:32, Niranjana Vishwanathapura wrote:
>     >       >> > +VM_BIND/UNBIND ioctl will immediately start
>     binding/unbinding
>     >       the mapping in an
>     >       >> > +async worker. The binding and unbinding will work like a
>     special
>     >       GPU engine.
>     >       >> > +The binding and unbinding operations are serialized and
>     will
>     >       wait on specified
>     >       >> > +input fences before the operation and will signal the
>     output
>     >       fences upon the
>     >       >> > +completion of the operation. Due to serialization,
>     completion of
>     >       an operation
>     >       >> > +will also indicate that all previous operations are also
>     >       complete.
>     >       >>
>     >       >> I guess we should avoid saying "will immediately start
>     >       binding/unbinding" if
>     >       >> there are fences involved.
>     >       >>
>     >       >> And the fact that it's happening in an async worker seem to
>     imply
>     >       it's not
>     >       >> immediate.
>     >       >>
>     >
>     >       Ok, will fix.
>     >       This was added because in earlier design binding was deferred
>     until
>     >       next execbuff.
>     >       But now it is non-deferred (immediate in that sense). But yah,
>     this is
>     >       confusing
>     >       and will fix it.
>     >
>     >       >>
>     >       >> I have a question on the behavior of the bind operation when
>     no
>     >       input fence
>     >       >> is provided. Let say I do :
>     >       >>
>     >       >> VM_BIND (out_fence=fence1)
>     >       >>
>     >       >> VM_BIND (out_fence=fence2)
>     >       >>
>     >       >> VM_BIND (out_fence=fence3)
>     >       >>
>     >       >>
>     >       >> In what order are the fences going to be signaled?
>     >       >>
>     >       >> In the order of VM_BIND ioctls? Or out of order?
>     >       >>
>     >       >> Because you wrote "serialized I assume it's : in order
>     >       >>
>     >
>     >       Yes, in the order of VM_BIND/UNBIND ioctls. Note that bind and
>     unbind
>     >       will use
>     >       the same queue and hence are ordered.
>     >
>     >       >>
>     >       >> One thing I didn't realize is that because we only get one
>     >       "VM_BIND" engine,
>     >       >> there is a disconnect from the Vulkan specification.
>     >       >>
>     >       >> In Vulkan VM_BIND operations are serialized but per engine.
>     >       >>
>     >       >> So you could have something like this :
>     >       >>
>     >       >> VM_BIND (engine=rcs0, in_fence=fence1, out_fence=fence2)
>     >       >>
>     >       >> VM_BIND (engine=ccs0, in_fence=fence3, out_fence=fence4)
>     >       >>
>     >       >>
>     >       >> fence1 is not signaled
>     >       >>
>     >       >> fence3 is signaled
>     >       >>
>     >       >> So the second VM_BIND will proceed before the first VM_BIND.
>     >       >>
>     >       >>
>     >       >> I guess we can deal with that scenario in userspace by doing
>     the
>     >       wait
>     >       >> ourselves in one thread per engines.
>     >       >>
>     >       >> But then it makes the VM_BIND input fences useless.
>     >       >>
>     >       >>
>     >       >> Daniel : what do you think? Should be rework this or just
>     deal with
>     >       wait
>     >       >> fences in userspace?
>     >       >>
>     >       >
>     >       >My opinion is rework this but make the ordering via an engine
>     param
>     >       optional.
>     >       >
>     >       >e.g. A VM can be configured so all binds are ordered within the
>     VM
>     >       >
>     >       >e.g. A VM can be configured so all binds accept an engine
>     argument
>     >       (in
>     >       >the case of the i915 likely this is a gem context handle) and
>     binds
>     >       >ordered with respect to that engine.
>     >       >
>     >       >This gives UMDs options as the later likely consumes more KMD
>     >       resources
>     >       >so if a different UMD can live with binds being ordered within
>     the VM
>     >       >they can use a mode consuming less resources.
>     >       >
>     >
>     >       I think we need to be careful here if we are looking for some
>     out of
>     >       (submission) order completion of vm_bind/unbind.
>     >       In-order completion means, in a batch of binds and unbinds to be
>     >       completed in-order, user only needs to specify in-fence for the
>     >       first bind/unbind call and the our-fence for the last
>     bind/unbind
>     >       call. Also, the VA released by an unbind call can be re-used by
>     >       any subsequent bind call in that in-order batch.
>     >
>     >       These things will break if binding/unbinding were to be allowed
>     to
>     >       go out of order (of submission) and user need to be extra
>     careful
>     >       not to run into pre-mature triggereing of out-fence and bind
>     failing
>     >       as VA is still in use etc.
>     >
>     >       Also, VM_BIND binds the provided mapping on the specified
>     address
>     >       space
>     >       (VM). So, the uapi is not engine/context specific.
>     >
>     >       We can however add a 'queue' to the uapi which can be one from
>     the
>     >       pre-defined queues,
>     >       I915_VM_BIND_QUEUE_0
>     >       I915_VM_BIND_QUEUE_1
>     >       ...
>     >       I915_VM_BIND_QUEUE_(N-1)
>     >
>     >       KMD will spawn an async work queue for each queue which will
>     only
>     >       bind the mappings on that queue in the order of submission.
>     >       User can assign the queue to per engine or anything like that.
>     >
>     >       But again here, user need to be careful and not deadlock these
>     >       queues with circular dependency of fences.
>     >
>     >       I prefer adding this later an as extension based on whether it
>     >       is really helping with the implementation.
>     >
>     >     I can tell you right now that having everything on a single
>     in-order
>     >     queue will not get us the perf we want.  What vulkan really wants
>     is one
>     >     of two things:
>     >      1. No implicit ordering of VM_BIND ops.  They just happen in
>     whatever
>     >     their dependencies are resolved and we ensure ordering ourselves
>     by
>     >     having a syncobj in the VkQueue.
>     >      2. The ability to create multiple VM_BIND queues.  We need at
>     least 2
>     >     but I don't see why there needs to be a limit besides the limits
>     the
>     >     i915 API already has on the number of engines.  Vulkan could
>     expose
>     >     multiple sparse binding queues to the client if it's not
>     arbitrarily
>     >     limited.
>
>     Thanks Jason, Lionel.
>
>     Jason, what are you referring to when you say "limits the i915 API
>     already
>     has on the number of engines"? I am not sure if there is such an uapi
>     today.
>
>   There's a limit of something like 64 total engines today based on the
>   number of bits we can cram into the exec flags in execbuffer2.  I think
>   someone had an extended version that allowed more but I ripped it out
>   because no one was using it.  Of course, execbuffer3 might not have that
>   problem at all.
>

Thanks Jason.
Ok, I am not sure which exec flag is that, but yah, execbuffer3 probably
will not have this limiation. So, we need to define a VM_BIND_MAX_QUEUE
and somehow export it to user (I am thinking of embedding it in
I915_PARAM_HAS_VM_BIND. bits[0]->HAS_VM_BIND, bits[1-3]->'n' meaning 2^n
queues.

>     I am trying to see how many queues we need and don't want it to be
>     arbitrarily
>     large and unduely blow up memory usage and complexity in i915 driver.
>
>   I expect a Vulkan driver to use at most 2 in the vast majority of cases. I
>   could imagine a client wanting to create more than 1 sparse queue in which
>   case, it'll be N+1 but that's unlikely.  As far as complexity goes, once
>   you allow two, I don't think the complexity is going up by allowing N.  As
>   for memory usage, creating more queues means more memory.  That's a
>   trade-off that userspace can make.  Again, the expected number here is 1
>   or 2 in the vast majority of cases so I don't think you need to worry.
>    

Ok, will start with n=3 meaning 8 queues.
That would require us create 8 workqueues.
We can change 'n' later if required.

Niranjana

>
>     >     Why?  Because Vulkan has two basic kind of bind operations and we
>     don't
>     >     want any dependencies between them:
>     >      1. Immediate.  These happen right after BO creation or maybe as
>     part of
>     >     vkBindImageMemory() or VkBindBufferMemory().  These don't happen
>     on a
>     >     queue and we don't want them serialized with anything.  To
>     synchronize
>     >     with submit, we'll have a syncobj in the VkDevice which is
>     signaled by
>     >     all immediate bind operations and make submits wait on it.
>     >      2. Queued (sparse): These happen on a VkQueue which may be the
>     same as
>     >     a render/compute queue or may be its own queue.  It's up to us
>     what we
>     >     want to advertise.  From the Vulkan API PoV, this is like any
>     other
>     >     queue.  Operations on it wait on and signal semaphores.  If we
>     have a
>     >     VM_BIND engine, we'd provide syncobjs to wait and signal just like
>     we do
>     >     in execbuf().
>     >     The important thing is that we don't want one type of operation to
>     block
>     >     on the other.  If immediate binds are blocking on sparse binds,
>     it's
>     >     going to cause over-synchronization issues.
>     >     In terms of the internal implementation, I know that there's going
>     to be
>     >     a lock on the VM and that we can't actually do these things in
>     >     parallel.  That's fine.  Once the dma_fences have signaled and
>     we're
>
>     Thats correct. It is like a single VM_BIND engine with multiple queues
>     feeding to it.
>
>   Right.  As long as the queues themselves are independent and can block on
>   dma_fences without holding up other queues, I think we're fine.
>    
>
>     >     unblocked to do the bind operation, I don't care if there's a bit
>     of
>     >     synchronization due to locking.  That's expected.  What we can't
>     afford
>     >     to have is an immediate bind operation suddenly blocking on a
>     sparse
>     >     operation which is blocked on a compute job that's going to run
>     for
>     >     another 5ms.
>
>     As the VM_BIND queue is per VM, VM_BIND on one VM doesn't block the
>     VM_BIND
>     on other VMs. I am not sure about usecases here, but just wanted to
>     clarify.
>
>   Yes, that's what I would expect.
>   --Jason
>    
>
>     Niranjana
>
>     >     For reference, Windows solves this by allowing arbitrarily many
>     paging
>     >     queues (what they call a VM_BIND engine/queue).  That design works
>     >     pretty well and solves the problems in question.  Again, we could
>     just
>     >     make everything out-of-order and require using syncobjs to order
>     things
>     >     as userspace wants. That'd be fine too.
>     >     One more note while I'm here: danvet said something on IRC about
>     VM_BIND
>     >     queues waiting for syncobjs to materialize.  We don't really
>     want/need
>     >     this.  We already have all the machinery in userspace to handle
>     >     wait-before-signal and waiting for syncobj fences to materialize
>     and
>     >     that machinery is on by default.  It would actually take MORE work
>     in
>     >     Mesa to turn it off and take advantage of the kernel being able to
>     wait
>     >     for syncobjs to materialize.  Also, getting that right is
>     ridiculously
>     >     hard and I really don't want to get it wrong in kernel space. 
>     When we
>     >     do memory fences, wait-before-signal will be a thing.  We don't
>     need to
>     >     try and make it a thing for syncobj.
>     >     --Jason
>     >
>     >   Thanks Jason,
>     >
>     >   I missed the bit in the Vulkan spec that we're allowed to have a
>     sparse
>     >   queue that does not implement either graphics or compute operations
>     :
>     >
>     >     "While some implementations may include
>     VK_QUEUE_SPARSE_BINDING_BIT
>     >     support in queue families that also include
>     >
>     >      graphics and compute support, other implementations may only
>     expose a
>     >     VK_QUEUE_SPARSE_BINDING_BIT-only queue
>     >
>     >      family."
>     >
>     >   So it can all be all a vm_bind engine that just does bind/unbind
>     >   operations.
>     >
>     >   But yes we need another engine for the immediate/non-sparse
>     operations.
>     >
>     >   -Lionel
>     >
>     >     
>     >
>     >       Daniel, any thoughts?
>     >
>     >       Niranjana
>     >
>     >       >Matt
>     >       >
>     >       >>
>     >       >> Sorry I noticed this late.
>     >       >>
>     >       >>
>     >       >> -Lionel
>     >       >>
>     >       >>


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