Re: [RFC] virtio: support VIRTIO_F_IO_BARRIER

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Thu, May 3, 2018 at 2:26 PM, Tiwei Bie <tiwei.bie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2018 at 10:06:52AM +0100, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
>> On Thu, May 03, 2018 at 10:59:55AM +0800, Tiwei Bie wrote:
>> > This patch introduces the support for VIRTIO_F_IO_BARRIER.
>> > When this feature is negotiated, driver will use the barriers
>> > suitable for hardware devices.
>> >
>> > Signed-off-by: Tiwei Bie <tiwei.bie@xxxxxxxxx>
>>
>> I should have thought of this earlier, but why is a new feature bit
>> necessary?  If a hardware virtio device is in use, then the device
>> should already negotiate VIRTIO_F_IOMMU_PLATFORM (i.e. use DMA APIs and
>> IOMMU callbacks).
>>
>> Does disabling weak_barriers when VIRTIO_F_IOMMU_PLATFORM is set solve
>> the problem?
>
> The VIRTIO_F_IOMMU_PLATFORM feature can be set when the
> device is implemented in software. And I think we don't
> want the performance drop in this case.

Good point.

Stefan