[PATCH 0/8] dma-mapping: migrate to physical address-based API

[Marek Szyprowski]

On 30.07.2025 13:11, Robin Murphy wrote:
> On 2025-07-08 11:27 am, Marek Szyprowski wrote:
>> On 30.06.2025 15:38, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>>> On Fri, Jun 27, 2025 at 08:02:13PM +0300, Leon Romanovsky wrote:
>>>>> Thanks for this rework! I assume that the next step is to add 
>>>>> map_phys
>>>>> callback also to the dma_map_ops and teach various dma-mapping 
>>>>> providers
>>>>> to use it to avoid more phys-to-page-to-phys conversions.
>>>> Probably Christoph will say yes, however I personally don't see any
>>>> benefit in this. Maybe I wrong here, but all existing .map_page()
>>>> implementation platforms don't support p2p anyway. They won't benefit
>>>> from this such conversion.
>>> I think that conversion should eventually happen, and rather sooner 
>>> than
>>> later.
>>
>> Agreed.
>>
>> Applied patches 1-7 to my dma-mapping-next branch. Let me know if one
>> needs a stable branch with it.
>
> As the maintainer of iommu-dma, please drop the iommu-dma patch 
> because it is broken. It does not in any way remove the struct page 
> dependency from iommu-dma, it merely hides it so things can crash more 
> easily in circumstances that clearly nobody's bothered to test.
>
>> Leon, it would be great if You could also prepare an incremental patch
>> adding map_phys callback to the dma_maps_ops, so the individual
>> arch-specific dma-mapping providers can be then converted (or simplified
>> in many cases) too.
>
> Marek, I'm surprised that even you aren't seeing why that would at 
> best be pointless churn. The fundamental design of dma_map_page() 
> operating on struct page is that it sits in between alloc_pages() at 
> the caller and kmap_atomic() deep down in the DMA API implementation 
> (which also subsumes any dependencies on having a kernel virtual 
> address at the implementation end). The natural working unit for 
> whatever replaces dma_map_page() will be whatever the replacement for 
> alloc_pages() returns, and the replacement for kmap_atomic() operates 
> on. Until that exists (and I simply cannot believe it would be an 
> unadorned physical address) there cannot be any *meaningful* progress 
> made towards removing the struct page dependency from the DMA API. If 
> there is also a goal to kill off highmem before then, then logically 
> we should just wait for that to land, then revert back to 
> dma_map_single() being the first-class interface, and dma_map_page() 
> can turn into a trivial page_to_virt() wrapper for the long tail of 
> caller conversions.
>
> Simply obfuscating the struct page dependency today by dressing it up 
> as a phys_addr_t with implicit baggage is not not in any way helpful. 
> It only makes the code harder to understand and more bug-prone. 
> Despite the disingenuous claims, it is quite blatantly the opposite of 
> "efficient" for callers to do extra work to throw away useful 
> information with page_to_phys(), and the implementation then have to 
> re-derive that information with pfn_valid()/phys_to_page().
>
> And by "bug-prone" I also include greater distractions like this 
> misguided idea that the same API could somehow work for non-memory 
> addresses too, so then everyone can move on bikeshedding VFIO while 
> overlooking the fundamental flaws in the whole premise. I mean, 
> besides all the issues I've already pointed out in that regard, not 
> least the glaring fact that it's literally just a worse version of *an 
> API we already have*, as DMA API maintainer do you *really* approve of 
> a design that depends on callers abusing DMA_ATTR_SKIP_CPU_SYNC, yet 
> will still readily blow up if they did then call a dma_sync op?
>
Robin, Your concerns are right. I missed the fact that making everything 
depend on phys_addr_t would make DMA-mapping API prone for various 
abuses. I need to think a bit more on this and try to understand more 
the PCI P2P case, what means that I will probably miss this merge 
window. I'm sorry for the lack of being active in the discussion, but I 
just got back from my holidays and I'm trying to catch up.


Best regards
-- 
Marek Szyprowski, PhD
Samsung R&D Institute Poland