[RFC 0/4] Virtio uses DMA API for all devices

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

On Tue, 2018-08-07 at 00:46 +0300, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 07, 2018 at 07:26:35AM +1000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> > On Mon, 2018-08-06 at 23:35 +0300, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > > > As I said replying to Christoph, we are "leaking" into the interface
> > > > something here that is really what's the VM is doing to itself, which
> > > > is to stash its memory away in an inaccessible place.
> > > > 
> > > > Cheers,
> > > > Ben.
> > > 
> > > I think Christoph merely objects to the specific implementation.  If
> > > instead you do something like tweak dev->bus_dma_mask for the virtio
> > > device I think he won't object.
> > 
> > Well, we don't have "bus_dma_mask" yet ..or you mean dma_mask ?
> > 
> > So, something like that would be a possibility, but the problem is that
> > the current virtio (guest side) implementation doesn't honor this when
> > not using dma ops and will not use dma ops if not using iommu, so back
> > to square one.
> 
> Well we have the RFC for that - the switch to using DMA ops unconditionally isn't
> problematic itself IMHO, for now that RFC is blocked
> by its perfromance overhead for now but Christoph says
> he's trying to remove that for direct mappings,
> so we should hopefully be able to get there in X weeks.

That would be good yes.

 ../..

> > --- a/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c
> > +++ b/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c
> > @@ -155,7 +155,7 @@ static bool vring_use_dma_api(struct virtio_device
> > *vdev)
> >          * the DMA API if we're a Xen guest, which at least allows
> >          * all of the sensible Xen configurations to work correctly.
> >          */
> > -       if (xen_domain())
> > +       if (xen_domain() || arch_virtio_direct_dma_ops(&vdev->dev))
> >                 return true;
> >  
> >         return false;
> 
> Right but can't we fix the retpoline overhead such that
> vring_use_dma_api will not be called on data path any longer, making
> this a setup time check?

Yes it needs to be a setup time check regardless actually !

The above is broken, sorry I was a bit quick here (too early in the
morning... ugh). We don't want the arch to go override the dma ops
every time that is callled.

But yes, if we can fix the overhead, it becomes just a matter of
setting up the "right" ops automatically.

> > (Passing the dev allows the arch to know this is a virtio device in
> > "direct" mode or whatever we want to call the !iommu case, and
> > construct appropriate DMA ops for it, which aren't the same as the DMA
> > ops of any other PCI device who *do* use the iommu).
> 
> I think that's where Christoph might have specific ideas about it.

OK well, assuming Christoph can solve the direct case in a way that
also work for the virtio !iommu case, we still want some bit of logic
somewhere that will "switch" to swiotlb based ops if the DMA mask is
limited.

You mentioned an RFC for that ? Do you happen to have a link ?

It would be indeed ideal if all we had to do was setup some kind of
bus_dma_mask on all PCI devices and have virtio automagically insert
swiotlb when necessary.

Cheers,
Ben.