Re: [PATCH] PCI: endpoint: Migrate to Genalloc framework for outbound window memory allocation

[Bjorn Helgaas]

On Sun, Mar 17, 2024 at 11:39:17AM +0530, Manivannan Sadhasivam wrote:
> As proposed during the last year 'PCI Endpoint Subsystem Open Items
> Discussion' of Linux Plumbers conference [1], let's migrate to Genalloc
> framework for managing the endpoint outbound window memory allocation.
> 
> PCI Endpoint subsystem is using a custom memory allocator in pci-epc-mem
> driver from the start for managing the memory required to map the host
> address space (outbound) in endpoint. Even though it works well, it
> completely defeats the purpose of the 'Genalloc framework', a general
> purpose memory allocator framework created to avoid various custom memory
> allocators in the kernel.

Nice idea.  I wonder if something like this could be done for PCI BAR
assignment, i.e., the stuff in setup-bus.c.  There are a lot of
constraints there, so maybe it wouldn't be practical.

> The migration to Genalloc framework is done is such a way that the existing
> API semantics are preserved. So that the callers of the EPC mem APIs do not
> need any modification (apart from the pcie-designware-epc driver that
> queries page size).
> 
> Internally, the EPC mem driver now uses Genalloc framework's
> 'gen_pool_first_fit_order_align' algorithm that aligns the allocated memory
> based on the requested size as like the previous allocator. And the
> page size passed during pci_epc_mem_init() API is used as the minimum order
> for the memory allocations.

/as like the previous allocator/as the previous allocator did/

> During the migration, 'struct pci_epc_mem' is removed as it is seems
> redundant and the existing 'struct pci_epc_mem_window' in 'struct pci_epc'
> is now used to hold the address windows of the endpoint controller.

s/as it is seems/as it seems/

If this is not a logically required part of the conversion, could the
pci_epc_mem removal be a separate patch?

The docs refer to it as "genalloc", i.e., not capitalized:
https://docs.kernel.org/core-api/genalloc.html

Thanks for working on this.

Bjorn