linux-kernel - Re: NVMe vs DMA addressing limitations

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Date:   Tue, 10 Jan 2017 15:48:39 +0100
From:   Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>
To:     Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...aro.org>
Cc:     Nikita Yushchenko <nikita.yoush@...entembedded.com>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>,
        linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org,
        Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
        Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-renesas-soc@...r.kernel.org,
        Simon Horman <horms@...ge.net.au>, linux-pci@...r.kernel.org,
        Bjorn Helgaas <bhelgaas@...gle.com>,
        artemi.ivanov@...entembedded.com,
        Keith Busch <keith.busch@...el.com>, Jens Axboe <axboe@...com>,
        Sagi Grimberg <sagi@...mberg.me>,
        linux-nvme@...ts.infradead.org
Subject: Re: NVMe vs DMA addressing limitations

On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 12:01:05PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> Another workaround me might need is to limit amount of concurrent DMA
> in the NVMe driver based on some platform quirk. The way that NVMe works,
> it can have very large amounts of data that is concurrently mapped into
> the device.

That's not really just NVMe - other storage and network controllers also
can DMA map giant amounts of memory.  There are a couple aspects to it:

 - dma coherent memoery - right now NVMe doesn't use too much of it,
   but upcoming low-end NVMe controllers will soon start to require
   fairl large amounts of it for the host memory buffer feature that
   allows for DRAM-less controller designs.  As an interesting quirk
   that is memory only used by the PCIe devices, and never accessed
   by the Linux host at all.

 - size vs number of the dynamic mapping.  We probably want the dma_ops
   specify a maximum mapping size for a given device.  As long as we
   can make progress with a few mappings swiotlb / the iommu can just
   fail mapping and the driver will propagate that to the block layer
   that throttles I/O.