Re: [RFC] dma-mapping: introduce dma_can_skip_unmap()

[Xuan Zhuo <xuanzhuo@linux.alibaba.com>]

On Fri, 1 Mar 2024 18:04:10 +0000, Robin Murphy <robin.murphy@arm.com> wrote:
> On 2024-03-01 1:41 pm, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 01, 2024 at 12:42:39PM +0000, Robin Murphy wrote:
> >> On 2024-03-01 11:50 am, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Mar 01, 2024 at 11:38:25AM +0000, Robin Murphy wrote:
> >>>> Not only is this idea not viable, the entire premise seems flawed - the
> >>>> reasons for virtio needing to use the DMA API at all are highly likely to be
> >>>> the same reasons for it needing to use the DMA API *properly* anyway.
> >>>
> >>> The idea has nothing to do with virtio per se
> >>
> >> Sure, I can see that, but if virtio is presented as the justification for
> >> doing this then it's the justification I'm going to look at first. And the
> >> fact is that it *does* seem to have particular significance, since having up
> >> to 19 DMA addresses involved in a single transfer is very much an outlier
> >> compared to typical hardware drivers.
> >
> > That's a valid comment. Xuan Zhuo do other drivers do this too,
> > could you check pls?
> >
> >> Furthermore the fact that DMA API
> >> support was retrofitted to the established virtio design means I would
> >> always expect it to run up against more challenges than a hardware driver
> >> designed around the expectation that DMA buffers have DMA addresses.
> >
> >
> > It seems virtio can't drive any DMA changes then it's forever tainted?
> > Seems unfair - we retrofitted it years ago, enough refactoring happened
> > since then.
>
> No, I'm not saying we couldn't still do things to help virtio if and
> when it does prove reasonable to do so; just that if anything it's
> *because* that retrofit is mature and fairly well polished by now that
> any remaining issues like this one are going to be found in the most
> awkward corners and thus unlikely to generalise.
>
> FWIW in my experience it seems more common for network drivers to
> actually have the opposite problem, where knowing the DMA address of a
> buffer is easy, but keeping track of the corresponding CPU address can
> be more of a pain.
>
> >>> - we are likely not the
> >>> only driver that wastes a lot of memory (hot in cache, too) keeping DMA
> >>> addresses around for the sole purpose of calling DMA unmap.  On a bunch
> >>> of systems unmap is always a nop and we could save some memory if there
> >>> was a way to find out. What is proposed is an API extension allowing
> >>> that for anyone - not just virtio.
> >>
> >> And the point I'm making is that that "always" is a big assumption, and in
> >> fact for the situations where it is robustly true we already have the
> >> DEFINE_DMA_UNMAP_{ADDR,LEN} mechanism.
> >> I'd consider it rare for DMA
> >> addresses to be stored in isolation, as opposed to being part of some kind
> >> of buffer descriptor (or indeed struct scatterlist, for an obvious example)
> >> that a driver or subsystem still has to keep track of anyway, so in general
> >> I believe the scope for saving decidedly small amounts of memory at runtime
> >> is also considerably less than you might be imagining.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Robin.
> >
> >
> > Yes. DEFINE_DMA_UNMAP_ exits but that's only compile time.
> > And I think the fact we have that mechanism is a hint that
> > enough configurations could benefit from a runtime
> > mechanism, too.
> >
> > E.g. since you mentioned scatterlist, it has a bunch of ifdefs
> > in place.
>
> But what could that benefit be in general? It's not like we can change
> structure layouts on a per-DMA-mapping-call basis to save
> already-allocated memory... :/

We can put the memory together. If the unmap is not needed, then we do not
allocate the memory. That is the way we are trying.

Thanks.



>
> Thanks,
> Robin.
>
> >
> > Of course
> > - finding more examples would be benefitial to help maintainers
> >    do the cost/benefit analysis
> > - a robust implementation is needed
> >
> >