To extend the feature of vfio-mdev

[Kenneth Lee]

On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 09:31:25AM +0100, Jean-Philippe Brucker wrote:
> Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 09:31:25 +0100
> From: Jean-Philippe Brucker <jean-philippe.brucker at arm.com>
> To: Kenneth Lee <liguozhu at hisilicon.com>, Alex Williamson
>  <alex.williamson at redhat.com>
> CC: "kenneth-lee-2012 at foxmail.com" <kenneth-lee-2012 at foxmail.com>, Jon
>  Masters <jcm at jonmasters.org>, "jcm at redhat.com" <jcm at redhat.com>,
>  "xuzaibo at huawei.com" <xuzaibo at huawei.com>,
>  "linux-accelerators at lists.ozlabs.org"
>  <linux-accelerators at lists.ozlabs.org>
> Subject: Re: To extend the feature of vfio-mdev
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>  Thunderbird/52.4.0
> Message-ID: <6fed6c27-4b38-7d65-ee5d-63d6bb283e95 at arm.com>
> 
> On 23/10/17 06:18, Kenneth Lee wrote:
> >>>>> 3. Let iommu driver accept more than one iommu_domain for the same
> >>>>>    device. The substream id or pasid should be support for that  
> >>>>
> >>>> You're really extending the definition of an iommu_domain to include
> >>>> PASID to do this, I don't think it makes sense in the general case.  So
> >>>> perhaps you're talking about a PASID management layer sitting on top of
> >>>> an iommu_domain.  AIUI for PCIe, a device has a requester ID which is
> >>>> used to find the context entry for that device.  The IOMMU may support
> >>>> PASID, which would cause a first level lookup via those set of page
> >>>> tables, or it might only support second level translation.  The
> >>>> iommu_domain is a reflection of that initial, single requester ID.  
> >>>
> >>> Maybe I misunderstand this. But the IOMMU hardware, such as SMMU for ARM,
> >>> support multiple page table and is referred by something like ASID. If we should
> >>> support it in Linux, iommu_domain should be the best choice (no matter you call
> >>> it cookie or id or something else). Or where you can get a object referring to it?
> >>
> >> For PASID, a PASID is unique only within the requester ID.  I don't
> >> know of anything equivalent to your ASID within PCIe.
> >>
> > 
> > As my understanding to the ARM Spec:
> > 
> > 	PCIE[PASID]=ARM_SMMU[ASID]=ARM_SMMU[SubstreamID],
> > 	PCIE[RequestID]=ARM_SMMU[StreamID]
> 
> In the SMMUv3 spec, the PASID is dissociated from the ASID. We set the
> ASID in the context descriptor indexed by PASID, which provides more
> flexibility when the CPU's ASID capacity and endpoint's PASID capacity differ.

Yes. Sorry, I tried to make the concept simply. But it is wrong slightly.

> 
> > For ARM SMMU, the Stream ID is used to index a Context Descriptors
> > Table while and Sub-stream ID is used to index a Descriptor which refer
> > to a general page table in the same format as MMU.
> > 
> > So both RequestID and PASID uniquely identify a address space. Then
> > every iommu-enabled device can service more than one user process at the
> > same time.
> > 
> > So the IOMMU should support more than one page table, which in turn
> > should be added to somewhere in Linux. If the iommu_domain refer to one
> > address space, the iommu driver should accept more than one
> > iommu_domain.
> 
> The current design choice is to have multiple address space per
> iommu_domain (and one PASID table per domain). It fits better with
> existing IOMMU and VFIO APIs.
> 

I am still reading the patchset. But if the PASID is used to index the address
space table in iommu_domain, it will become a general concept in the whole
system. But if we would bind the address space with iommu_domain, the
iommu_domain become a handle for any process to control the device dma. It will
be easier for one process with two or more domains to control the device for
different purpose. And it is also easier for a process hand over the domain to
another without change anything. And the process need not to know anything about
pasid. A domain is a handle to control the device separately. I think this make
thing simpler.

> Thanks,
> Jean

Thanks for discussion.
-- 
			-Kenneth(Hisilicon)

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