Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH v02 1/7] arm: introduce remoteprocessor iommu module

[Andrii Tseglytskyi <andrii.tseglytskyi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 4:29 PM, Julien Grall <julien.grall@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 07/22/2014 01:42 PM, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
>> On Wed, 16 Jul 2014, Ian Campbell wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2014-07-04 at 14:59 +0100, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 26 Jun 2014, Andrii Tseglytskyi wrote:
>>>>> This is a fisrst patch from patch series which was
>>>>> developed to handle remote (external) processors
>>>>> memory management units. Remote processors are
>>>>> typically used for graphic rendering (GPUs) and
>>>>> high quality video decoding (IPUs). They are typically
>>>>> installed on such multimedia SoCs as OMAP4 / OMAP5.
>>>>>
>>>>> As soon as remoteprocessor MMU typically works with
>>>>> pagetables filled by physical addresses, which are
>>>>> allocated by domU kernel, it is almost impossible to
>>>>> use them under Xen, intermediate physical addresses
>>>>> allocated by kernel, need to be translated to machine
>>>>> addresses.
>>>>>
>>>>> This patch introduces a simple framework to perform
>>>>> pfn -> mfn translation for external MMUs.
>>>>> It introduces basic data structures and algorithms
>>>>> needed for translation.
>>>>>
>>>>> Typically, when MMU is configured, some it registers
>>>>> are updated by new values. Introduced frameworks
>>>>> uses traps as starting point of remoteproc MMUs
>>>>> pagetables translation.
>>>>>
>>>>> Change-Id: Ia4d311a40289df46a003f5ae8706c150bee1885d
>>>>> Signed-off-by: Andrii Tseglytskyi <andrii.tseglytskyi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>>
>>>> There is one problem with this patch: you need to find a way to "pin"
>>>> the p2m entries for the pfns and mfns found in the pagetables translated
>>>> by remoteproc_iommu.c.  Otherwise Xen might decide to change the pfn to
>>>> mfn mappings for the domain, breaking the pagetables already translated
>>>> by remoteproc_iommu.c.  pfn to mfn mappings are not guaranteed to be
>>>> stable. At the moment Xen on ARM wouldn't change pfn to mfn mappings
>>>> under the guest feet, but features like memory sharing or swapping,
>>>> supported on x86, could cause it to happen.
>>>
>>> I've not fully grokked this patch but wouldn't it be easier and better
>>> to have a hook to cause the remoteproc to throw away and rebuild its
>>> mappings when this happens? It could be called from e.g. the TLB flush
>>> associated with the p2m changing, I think.
>>
>> I guess it depends on how often Xen or the Xen tools are going to change
>> the p2m for a running domain. For example changing one page mapping a
>> couple of times a second would be very expensive if we have to rebuild
>> the remoteproc pagetables every time.
>
> The kernel could also change the p2m mapping via the ballooning driver.
>

I think that kernel may call hypercall to update needed pagetables in
this case. But I need to look deeply to this code.


> Regards,
>
> --
> Julien Grall



-- 

Andrii Tseglytskyi | Embedded Dev
GlobalLogic
www.globallogic.com

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