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Re: [PATCH v1 2/6] xen/arm: Reserve resources for virtio-pci



Hi Stefano,

On 25/09/2024 00:16, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024, Julien Grall wrote:
On 24/09/2024 18:11, Edgar E. Iglesias wrote:
On Tue, Sep 24, 2024 at 05:35:20PM +0100, Julien Grall wrote:
Hi Edgar,

On 24/09/2024 17:23, Edgar E. Iglesias wrote:
From: "Edgar E. Iglesias" <edgar.iglesias@xxxxxxx>

Reserve memory ranges and interrupt lines for an externally
emulated PCI controller (e.g by QEMU) dedicated to hosting
Virtio devices and potentially other emulated devices.

Signed-off-by: Edgar E. Iglesias <edgar.iglesias@xxxxxxx>
---
    xen/include/public/arch-arm.h | 17 +++++++++++++++++
    1 file changed, 17 insertions(+)

diff --git a/xen/include/public/arch-arm.h
b/xen/include/public/arch-arm.h
index e19f0251a6..654b827715 100644
--- a/xen/include/public/arch-arm.h
+++ b/xen/include/public/arch-arm.h
@@ -494,6 +494,20 @@ typedef uint64_t xen_callback_t;
    #define GUEST_RAM1_BASE   xen_mk_ullong(0x0200000000) /* 952GB of RAM
@ 8GB */
    #define GUEST_RAM1_SIZE   xen_mk_ullong(0xee00000000)
+/* Virtio PCI - Ordered by decreasing size to keep things aligned */
+#define GUEST_VIRTIO_PCI_PREFETCH_MEM_TYPE  xen_mk_ullong(0x43000000)
+#define GUEST_VIRTIO_PCI_PREFETCH_MEM_BASE
xen_mk_ullong(0x0f000000000)
+#define GUEST_VIRTIO_PCI_PREFETCH_MEM_SIZE  xen_mk_ullong(0x100000000)
+
+#define GUEST_VIRTIO_PCI_ECAM_BASE
(GUEST_VIRTIO_PCI_PREFETCH_MEM_BASE + \
+
GUEST_VIRTIO_PCI_PREFETCH_MEM_SIZE)
+#define GUEST_VIRTIO_PCI_ECAM_SIZE      xen_mk_ullong(0x10000000)
+
+#define GUEST_VIRTIO_PCI_MEM_TYPE         xen_mk_ullong(0x02000000)
+#define GUEST_VIRTIO_PCI_MEM_BASE         (GUEST_VIRTIO_PCI_ECAM_BASE +
\
+                                           GUEST_VIRTIO_PCI_ECAM_SIZE)
+#define GUEST_VIRTIO_PCI_MEM_SIZE         xen_mk_ullong(0x00002000000)

Why is this specific to virtio PCI? However, I am not entirely convinced
we
should have a second PCI hostbridge exposed to the guest for a few
reasons:
    1. This require to reserve yet another range in the address space
(could
be solved with a more dynamic layout)
    2. From your instructions, the guest needs to explicitly do a PCI
rescan.

Another big advantage I forgot to mention is disaggregation. In a world where
the hostbridge is handled in Xen, you could have a PCI device emulated by dom0
while the other is emulated by a stub domain.


So rather than having a second hostbridge, have you considered to extend
the
existing hostbridge (implemented in Xen) to support a mix of physical PCI
device and virtual one?


Thanks Julien,

It's briefly come up in a couple of discussions but I haven't looked
carefully at it. It is a good idea and it's probably worth prototyping
to see what the gaps are in hypercall interfaces, QEMU support etc.

I also vaguely recall to discuss it on xen-devel. But I couldn't find the
discussion... :(.

I think all the hypercalls should be there but will require some plumbing in
Xen on Arm. QEMU should be able to request Xen to forward configuration access
for a given PCI device (see XEN_DMOP_IO_RANGE_PCI). They will then be
forwarded to QEMU using IOREQ_TYPE_PCI_CONFIG.

We also have an hypercall to be able to inject interrupts from QEMU (see
XEN_DMOP_set_irq_level).

Hi Julien,

Yes, I remember a thread on xen-devel too about this topic when EPAM
suggested a similar two-hostbridges approach. I was one of the people
suggesting to use a single hostbridge at the time.

However, when we looked at the implementation more closely, the
two-hostbridge approach was easier to get up and running. It works
(almost) out of the box. Currently, we have the two-hostbridge solution
working on both ARM and x86 to enable virtio-pci to work alongside vPCI
in Dom0less/Hyperlaunch configurations.

I understand this is the easiest solution... However, this requires code in Xen that I am not yet convinced it is good to have.

I am not too concerned about the MMIO range part. This can be (easily) solved. I am more concerned about the support of background region and the fact the OS needs to be able to rescan.

I am definitely not an expert of PCI, but AFAIK, it is possible to have the guest to be notified when a PCI device is hotplug. Why can't we use it?


While I think that a single hostbridge is better architecturally, it is
important to consider that virtio is moving toward a new transport
(virtio-msg, Bertrand is also involved) which does not require a
hostbridge. This new transport is key for all our use-cases as it
addresses safety requirements and supports AMP configurations without a
shared hypervisor between the frontend and backend. Edgar is one of the
top contributors to virtio-msg. Given this, I don't think it's
worthwhile to invest much effort in virtio-pci, as it will be replaced
soon in embedded applications.
To me this raises the question why we should have a temporary solution upstream then?

Cheers,

--
Julien Grall



 


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