Re: [PATCH v3 00/14] Adding GAUDI NIC code to habanalabs driver

[Jason Gunthorpe]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 02:59:28PM +0300, Oded Gabbay wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 2:56 PM Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 02:36:10PM +0300, Gal Pressman wrote:
> > > On 17/09/2020 20:18, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Sep 15, 2020 at 11:46:58PM +0300, Oded Gabbay wrote:
> > > >> infrastructure for communication between multiple accelerators. Same
> > > >> as Nvidia uses NVlink, we use RDMA that we have inside our ASIC.
> > > >> The RDMA implementation we did does NOT support some basic RDMA
> > > >> IBverbs (such as MR and PD) and therefore, we can't use the rdma-core
> > > >> library or to connect to the rdma infrastructure in the kernel.
> > > >
> > > > You can't create a parallel RDMA subsystem in netdev, or in misc, and
> > > > you can't add random device offloads as IOCTL to nedevs.
> > > >
> > > > RDMA is the proper home for all the networking offloads that don't fit
> > > > into netdev.
> > > >
> > > > EFA was able to fit into rdma-core/etc and it isn't even RoCE at
> > > > all. I'm sure this can too.
> > >
> > > Well, EFA wasn't welcomed to the RDMA subsystem with open arms ;), initially it
> > > was suggested to go through the vfio subsystem instead.
> > >
> > > I think this comes back to the discussion we had when EFA was upstreamed, which
> > > is what's the bar to get accepted to the RDMA subsystem.
> > > IIRC, what we eventually agreed on is having a userspace rdma-core provider and
> > > ibv_{ud,rc}_pingpong working (or just supporting one of the IB spec's QP types?).
> >
> > That is more or less where we ended up, yes.
> >
> > I'm most worried about this lack of PD and MR.
> >
> > Kernel must provide security for apps doing user DMA, PD and MR do
> > this. If the device doesn't have PD/MR then it is hard to see how a WQ
> > could ever be exposed directly to userspace, regardless of subsystem.
> 
> Hi Jason,
> What you say here is very true and we handle that with different
> mechanisms. I will start working on a dedicated patch-set of the RDMA
> code in the next few weeks with MUCH MORE details in the commit
> messages. That will explain exactly how we expose stuff and protect.
> 
> For example, regarding isolating between applications, we only support
> a single application opening our file descriptor.

Then the driver has a special PD create that requires the misc file
descriptor to authorize RDMA access to the resources in that security
context.

> Another example is that the submission of WQ is done through our QMAN
> mechanism and is NOT mapped to userspace (due to the restrictions you
> mentioned above and other restrictions).

Sure, other RDMA drivers also require a kernel ioctl for command
execution.

In this model the MR can be a software construct, again representing a
security authorization:

- A 'full process' MR, in which case the kernel command excution
  handles dma map and pinning at command execution time
- A 'normal' MR, in which case the DMA list is pre-created and the
  command execution just re-uses this data

The general requirement for RDMA is the same as DRM, you must provide
enough code in rdma-core to show how the device works, and minimally
test it. EFA uses ibv_ud_pingpong, and some pyverbs tests IIRC.

So you'll want to arrange something where the default MR and PD
mechanisms do something workable on this device, like auto-open the
misc FD when building the PD, and support the 'normal' MR flow for
command execution.

Jason