Re: [PATCH V14 0/9] dma: add Qualcomm Technologies HIDMA driver

From: Christoffer Dall
Date: Mon Feb 08 2016 - 05:14:05 EST


Hi Sinan,

On Thu, Feb 04, 2016 at 11:34:31PM -0500, Sinan Kaya wrote:
> The Qualcomm Technologies HIDMA device has been designed
> to support virtualization technology. The driver has been
> divided into two to follow the hardware design.
>
> 1. HIDMA Management driver
> 2. HIDMA Channel driver
>
> Each HIDMA HW consists of multiple channels. These channels
> share some set of common parameters. These parameters are
> initialized by the management driver during power up.
> Same management driver is used for monitoring the execution
> of the channels. Management driver can change the performance
> behavior dynamically such as bandwidth allocation and
> prioritization in the future.
>
> The management driver is executed in host context and
> is the main management entity for all channels provided by
> the device.

I'm not at all familiar with this kind of hardware.

Once an entity (userspace or VM) has a HIDAM channel assigned via VFIO,
how does it use it? Is it used in relation with another device to
perform DMA on its behalf or is a HIDMA channel something that's useful
on its own?

Thanks,
-Christoffer