Re: [RFC v2] vhost: introduce mdev based hardware vhost backend
From: Jason Wang
Date: Mon Jul 08 2019 - 22:51:14 EST
On 2019/7/8 äå2:16, Tiwei Bie wrote:
On Fri, Jul 05, 2019 at 08:49:46AM -0600, Alex Williamson wrote:
On Thu, 4 Jul 2019 14:21:34 +0800
Tiwei Bie <tiwei.bie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, Jul 04, 2019 at 12:31:48PM +0800, Jason Wang wrote:
On 2019/7/3 äå9:08, Tiwei Bie wrote:
On Wed, Jul 03, 2019 at 08:16:23PM +0800, Jason Wang wrote:
On 2019/7/3 äå7:52, Tiwei Bie wrote:
On Wed, Jul 03, 2019 at 06:09:51PM +0800, Jason Wang wrote:
On 2019/7/3 äå5:13, Tiwei Bie wrote:
Details about this can be found here:
https://lwn.net/Articles/750770/
What's new in this version
==========================
A new VFIO device type is introduced - vfio-vhost. This addressed
some comments from here:https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/cover/984763/
Below is the updated device interface:
Currently, there are two regions of this device: 1) CONFIG_REGION
(VFIO_VHOST_CONFIG_REGION_INDEX), which can be used to setup the
device; 2) NOTIFY_REGION (VFIO_VHOST_NOTIFY_REGION_INDEX), which
can be used to notify the device.
1. CONFIG_REGION
The region described by CONFIG_REGION is the main control interface.
Messages will be written to or read from this region.
The message type is determined by the `request` field in message
header. The message size is encoded in the message header too.
The message format looks like this:
struct vhost_vfio_op {
__u64 request;
__u32 flags;
/* Flag values: */
#define VHOST_VFIO_NEED_REPLY 0x1 /* Whether need reply */
__u32 size;
union {
__u64 u64;
struct vhost_vring_state state;
struct vhost_vring_addr addr;
} payload;
};
The existing vhost-kernel ioctl cmds are reused as the message
requests in above structure.
Still a comments like V1. What's the advantage of inventing a new protocol?
I'm trying to make it work in VFIO's way..
I believe either of the following should be better:
- using vhost ioctl, we can start from SET_VRING_KICK/SET_VRING_CALL and
extend it with e.g notify region. The advantages is that all exist userspace
program could be reused without modification (or minimal modification). And
vhost API hides lots of details that is not necessary to be understood by
application (e.g in the case of container).
Do you mean reusing vhost's ioctl on VFIO device fd directly,
or introducing another mdev driver (i.e. vhost_mdev instead of
using the existing vfio_mdev) for mdev device?
Can we simply add them into ioctl of mdev_parent_ops?
Right, either way, these ioctls have to be and just need to be
added in the ioctl of the mdev_parent_ops. But another thing we
also need to consider is that which file descriptor the userspace
will do the ioctl() on. So I'm wondering do you mean let the
userspace do the ioctl() on the VFIO device fd of the mdev
device?
Yes.
Got it! I'm not sure what's Alex opinion on this. If we all
agree with this, I can do it in this way.
Is there any other way btw?
Just a quick thought.. Maybe totally a bad idea. I was thinking
whether it would be odd to do non-VFIO's ioctls on VFIO's device
fd. So I was wondering whether it's possible to allow binding
another mdev driver (e.g. vhost_mdev) to the supported mdev
devices. The new mdev driver, vhost_mdev, can provide similar
ways to let userspace open the mdev device and do the vhost ioctls
on it. To distinguish with the vfio_mdev compatible mdev devices,
the device API of the new vhost_mdev compatible mdev devices
might be e.g. "vhost-net" for net?
So in VFIO case, the device will be for passthru directly. And
in VHOST case, the device can be used to accelerate the existing
virtualized devices.
How do you think?
VFIO really can't prevent vendor specific ioctls on the device file
descriptor for mdevs, but a) we'd want to be sure the ioctl address
space can't collide with ioctls we'd use for vfio defined purposes and
b) maybe the VFIO user API isn't what you want in the first place if
you intend to mostly/entirely ignore the defined ioctl set and replace
them with your own. In the case of the latter, you're also not getting
the advantages of the existing VFIO userspace code, so why expose a
VFIO device at all.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I guess the original idea is to reuse the VFIO DMA/IOMMU API for this.
Then we have the chance to reuse vfio codes in qemu for dealing with e.g
vIOMMU.
The mdev interface does provide a general interface for creating and
managing virtual devices, vfio-mdev is just one driver on the mdev
bus. Parav (Mellanox) has been doing work on mdev-core to help clean
out vfio-isms from the interface, aiui, with the intent of implementing
another mdev bus driver for using the devices within the kernel.
Great to know this! I found below series after some searching:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/3/8/821
In above series, the new mlx5_core mdev driver will do the probe
by calling mlx5_get_core_dev() first on the parent device of the
mdev device. In vhost_mdev, maybe we can also keep track of all
the compatible mdev devices and use this info to do the probe.
I don't get why this is needed. My understanding is if we want to go
this way, there're actually two parts. 1) Vhost mdev that implements the
device managements and vhost ioctl. 2) Vhost it self, which can accept
mdev fd as it backend through VHOST_NET_SET_BACKEND.
But we also need a way to allow vfio_mdev driver to distinguish
and reject the incompatible mdev devices.
One issue for this series is that it doesn't consider DMA isolation at all.
It
seems like this vhost-mdev driver might be similar, using mdev but not
necessarily vfio-mdev to expose devices. Thanks,
Yeah, I also think so!
I've cced some driver developers for their inputs. I think we need a
sample parent drivers in the next version for us to understand the full
picture.
Thanks
Thanks!
Tiwei
Alex