[Mesa-dev] [PATCH] dma-buf: Document dma-buf implicit fencing/resv fencing rules

[Daniel Vetter]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2021 at 1:08 PM Daniel Stone <daniel at fooishbar.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 at 17:20, Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter at ffwll.ch> wrote:
> > +        *
> > +        * IMPLICIT SYNCHRONIZATION RULES:
> > +        *
> > +        * Drivers which support implicit synchronization of buffer access as
> > +        * e.g. exposed in `Implicit Fence Poll Support`_ should follow the
> > +        * below rules.
>
> 'Should' ... ? Must.

Yeah  I guess I can upgrade a bunch of them.

> > +        * - Drivers should add a shared fence through
> > +        *   dma_resv_add_shared_fence() for anything the userspace API
> > +        *   considers a read access. This highly depends upon the API and
> > +        *   window system: E.g. OpenGL is generally implicitly synchronized on
> > +        *   Linux, but explicitly synchronized on Android. Whereas Vulkan is
> > +        *   generally explicitly synchronized for everything, and window system
> > +        *   buffers have explicit API calls (which then need to make sure the
> > +        *   implicit fences store here in @resv are updated correctly).
> > +        *
> > +        * - [...]
>
> Mmm, I think this is all right, but it could be worded much more
> clearly. Right now it's a bunch of points all smashed into one, and
> there's a lot of room for misinterpretation.
>
> Here's a strawman, starting with most basic and restrictive, working
> through to when you're allowed to wriggle your way out:
>
> Rule 1: Drivers must add a shared fence through
> dma_resv_add_shared_fence() for any read accesses against that buffer.
> This appends a fence to the shared array, ensuring that any future
> non-read access will be synchronised against this operation to only
> begin after it has completed.
>
> Rule 2: Drivers must add an exclusive fence through
> dma_resv_add_excl_fence() for any write accesses against that buffer.
> This replaces the exclusive fence with the new operation, ensuring
> that all future access will be synchronised against this operation to
> only begin after it has completed.
>
> Rule 3: Drivers must synchronise all accesses to buffers against
> existing implicit fences. Read accesses must synchronise against the
> exclusive fence (read-after-write), and write accesses must
> synchronise against both the exclusive (write-after-write) and shared
> (write-after-read) fences.
>
> Note 1: Users like OpenGL and window systems on non-Android userspace
> are generally implicitly synchronised. An implicitly-synchronised
> userspace is unaware of fences from prior operations, so the kernel
> mediates scheduling to create the illusion that GPU work is FIFO. For
> example, an application will flush and schedule GPU write work to
> render its image, then immediately tell the window system to display
> that image; the window system may immediately flush and schedule GPU
> read work to display that image, with neither waiting for the write to
> have completed. The kernel provides coherence by synchronising the
> read access against the write fence in the exclusive slot, so that the
> image displayed is correct.
>
> Note 2: Users like Vulkan and Android window system are generally
> explicitly synchronised. An explicitly-synchronised userspace is
> responsible for tracking its own read and write access and providing
> the kernel with synchronisation barriers. For instance, a Vulkan
> application rendering to a buffer and subsequently using it as a read
> texture, must annotate the read operation with a read-after-write
> synchronisation barrier.
>
> Note 3: Implicit and explicit userspace can coexist. For instance, an
> explicitly-synchronised Vulkan application may be running as a client
> of an implicitly-synchronised window system which uses OpenGL for
> composition; an implicitly-synchronised OpenGL application may be
> running as a client of a window system which uses Vulkan for
> composition.
>
> Note 4: Some subsystems, for example V4L2, do not pipeline operations,
> and instead only return to userspace when the scheduled work against a
> buffer has fully retired.
>
> Exemption 1: Fully self-coherent userspace may skip implicit
> synchronisation barriers. For instance, accesses between two
> Vulkan-internal buffers allocated by a single application do not need
> to synchronise against each other's implicit fences, as the client is
> responsible for explicitly providing barriers for access. A
> self-contained OpenGL userspace also has no need to implicitly
> synchronise its access if the driver instead tracks all access and
> inserts the appropriate synchronisation barriers.
>
> Exemption 2: When implicit and explicit userspace coexist, the
> explicit side may skip intermediate synchronisation, and only place
> synchronisation barriers at transition points. For example, a Vulkan
> compositor displaying a buffer from an OpenGL application would need
> to synchronise its first access against the fence placed in the
> exclusive implicit-synchronisation slot. Once this read has fully
> retired, the compositor has no need to participate in implicit
> synchronisation until it is ready to return the buffer to the
> application, at which point it must insert all its non-retired
> accesses into the shared slot, which the application will then
> synchronise future write accesses against.

So I think this is excellent, but maybe better suited in the uapi
section as a sperate chapter? Essentially keep your rules in the
driver-internal docs, but move the Note/excemptions into the uapi
section under a "Implicit Sync Mode of Operation" or whatever heading?

The other thing to keep in mind is that this is very much incomplete:
I'm silent on what drivers should do exactly with these fences. That's
largely because I haven't fully completed that audit, and there's a
pile of bugs there still.
-Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
http://blog.ffwll.ch