Re: [PATCH v2 1/1] KVM: arm64: allow the VM to select DEVICE_* and NORMAL_NC for IO memory

[Jason Gunthorpe]

On Wed, Dec 06, 2023 at 04:18:05PM +0100, Lorenzo Pieralisi wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 06, 2023 at 11:05:56AM -0400, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 06, 2023 at 02:49:02PM +0000, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> > > On Tue, Dec 05, 2023 at 03:48:22PM -0400, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Dec 05, 2023 at 07:24:37PM +0000, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> > > > > On Tue, Dec 05, 2023 at 12:43:18PM -0400, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > > > > > What if we change vfio-pci to use pgprot_device() like it already
> > > > > > really should and say the pgprot_noncached() is enforced as
> > > > > > DEVICE_nGnRnE and pgprot_device() may be DEVICE_nGnRE or NORMAL_NC?
> > > > > > Would that be acceptable?
> > > > > 
> > > > > pgprot_device() needs to stay as Device, otherwise you'd get speculative
> > > > > reads with potential side-effects.
> > > > 
> > > > I do not mean to change pgprot_device() I mean to detect the
> > > > difference via pgprot_device() vs pgprot_noncached(). They put a
> > > > different value in the PTE that we can sense. It is very hacky.
> > > 
> > > Ah, ok, it does look hacky though (as is the alternative of coming up
> > > with a new specific pgprot_*() that KVM can treat differently).
> > > 
> > > BTW, on those Mellanox devices that require different attributes within
> > > a BAR, do they have a problem with speculative reads causing
> > > side-effects? 
> > 
> > Yes. We definitely have had that problem in the past on older
> > devices. VFIO must map the BAR using pgprot_device/noncached() into
> > the VMM, no other choice is functionally OK.
> 
> Were those BARs tagged as prefetchable or non-prefetchable ? I assume the
> latter but please let me know if I am guessing wrong.

I don't know it was quite old HW. Probably.

Just because a BAR is not marked as prefetchable doesn't mean that the
device can't use NORMAL_NC on subsets of it.

Jason