Date:   Mon, 15 May 2017 11:44:09 -0600
From:   Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@...hat.com>
To:     "Chen, Xiaoguang" <xiaoguang.chen@...el.com>
Cc:     Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@...hat.com>,
        "Tian, Kevin" <kevin.tian@...el.com>,
        "intel-gfx@...ts.freedesktop.org" <intel-gfx@...ts.freedesktop.org>,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        "zhenyuw@...ux.intel.com" <zhenyuw@...ux.intel.com>,
        "Lv, Zhiyuan" <zhiyuan.lv@...el.com>,
        "intel-gvt-dev@...ts.freedesktop.org" 
        <intel-gvt-dev@...ts.freedesktop.org>,
        "Wang, Zhi A" <zhi.a.wang@...el.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 6/6] drm/i915/gvt: support QEMU getting the dmabuf

On Mon, 15 May 2017 03:36:50 +0000
"Chen, Xiaoguang" <xiaoguang.chen@...el.com> wrote:

> Hi Alex and Gerd,
> 
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Alex Williamson [mailto:alex.williamson@...hat.com]
> >Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2017 12:38 AM
> >To: Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@...hat.com>
> >Cc: Chen, Xiaoguang <xiaoguang.chen@...el.com>; Tian, Kevin
> ><kevin.tian@...el.com>; intel-gfx@...ts.freedesktop.org; linux-
> >kernel@...r.kernel.org; zhenyuw@...ux.intel.com; Lv, Zhiyuan
> ><zhiyuan.lv@...el.com>; intel-gvt-dev@...ts.freedesktop.org; Wang, Zhi A
> ><zhi.a.wang@...el.com>
> >Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 6/6] drm/i915/gvt: support QEMU getting the dmabuf
> >
> >On Fri, 12 May 2017 11:12:05 +0200
> >Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@...hat.com> wrote:
> >  
> >>   Hi,
> >>  
> >> > If the contents of the framebuffer change or if the parameters of
> >> > the framebuffer change?  I can't image that creating a new dmabuf fd
> >> > for every visual change within the framebuffer would be efficient,
> >> > but I don't have any concept of what a dmabuf actually does.  
> >>
> >> Ok, some background:
> >>
> >> The drm subsystem has the concept of planes.  The most important plane
> >> is the primary framebuffer (i.e. what gets scanned out to the physical
> >> display).  The cursor is a plane too, and there can be additional
> >> overlay planes for stuff like video playback.
> >>
> >> Typically there are multiple planes in a system and only one of them
> >> gets scanned out to the crtc, i.e. the fbdev emulation creates one
> >> plane for the framebuffer console.  The X-Server creates a plane too,
> >> and when you switch between X-Server and framebuffer console via
> >> ctrl-alt-fn the intel driver just reprograms the encoder to scan out
> >> the one or the other plane to the crtc.
> >>
> >> The dma-buf handed out by gvt is a reference to a plane.  I think on
> >> the host side gvt can see only the active plane (from encoder/crtc
> >> register
> >> programming) not the inactive ones.
> >>
> >> The dma-buf can be imported as opengl texture and then be used to
> >> render the guest display to a host window.  I think it is even
> >> possible to use the dma-buf as plane in the host drm driver and scan
> >> it out directly to a physical display.  The actual framebuffer content
> >> stays in gpu memory all the time, the cpu never has to touch it.
> >>
> >> It is possible to cache the dma-buf handles, i.e. when the guest boots
> >> you'll get the first for the fbcon plane, when the x-server starts the
> >> second for the x-server framebuffer, and when the user switches to the
> >> text console via ctrl-alt-fn you can re-use the fbcon dma-buf you
> >> already have.
> >>
> >> The caching becomes more important for good performance when the guest
> >> uses pageflipping (wayland does): define two planes, render into one
> >> while displaying the other, then flip the two for a atomic display
> >> update.
> >>
> >> The caching also makes it a bit difficult to create a good interface.
> >> So, the current patch set creates:
> >>
> >>   (a) A way to query the active planes (ioctl
> >>       INTEL_VGPU_QUERY_DMABUF added by patch 5/6 of this series).
> >>   (b) A way to create a dma-buf for the active plane (ioctl
> >>       INTEL_VGPU_GENERATE_DMABUF).
> >>
> >> Typical userspace workflow is to first query the plane, then check if
> >> it already has a dma-buf for it, and if not create one.  
> >
> >Thank you!  This is immensely helpful!
> >  
> >> > What changes to the framebuffer require a new dmabuf fd?  Shouldn't
> >> > the user query the parameters of the framebuffer through a dmabuf fd
> >> > and shouldn't the dmabuf fd have some signaling mechanism to the
> >> > user (eventfd perhaps) to notify the user to re-evaluate the parameters?  
> >>
> >> dma-bufs don't support that, they are really just a handle to a piece
> >> of memory, all metadata (format, size) most be communicated by other means.
> >>  
> >> > Otherwise are you imagining that the user polls the vfio region?  
> >>
> >> Hmm, notification support would probably a good reason to have a
> >> separate file handle to manage the dma-bufs (instead of using
> >> driver-specific ioctls on the vfio fd), because the driver could also
> >> use the management fd for notifications then.  
> >
> >I like this idea of a separate control fd for dmabufs, it provides not only a central
> >management point, but also a nice abstraction for the vfio device specific
> >interface.  We potentially only need a single
> >VFIO_DEVICE_GET_DMABUF_MGR_FD() ioctl to get a dmabuf management fd
> >(perhaps with a type parameter, ex. GFX) where maybe we could have vfio-core
> >incorporate this reference into the group lifecycle, so the vendor driver only
> >needs to fdget/put this manager fd for the various plane dmabuf fds spawned in
> >order to get core-level reference counting.  
> Following is my understanding of the management fd idea:
> 1) QEMU will call VFIO_DEVICE_GET_DMABUF_MGR_FD() ioctl to create a fd and saved the fd in vfio group while initializing the vfio.

Ideally there'd be kernel work here too if we want vfio-core to
incorporate lifecycle of this fd into the device/group/container
lifecycle.  Maybe we even want to generalize it further to something
like VFIO_DEVICE_GET_FD which takes a parameter of what type of FD to
get, GFX_DMABUF_MGR_FD in this case.  vfio-core would probably allocate
the fd, tap into the release hook for reference counting and pass it to
the vfio_device_ops (mdev vendor driver in this case) to attach further.

> 2) vendor driver use fdget to add reference count of the fd.
> 3) vendor driver use ioctl to the fd to query plane information or create dma-buf fd.
> 4) vendor driver use fdput when finished using this fd.
> 
> Is my understanding right?

With the above addition, which maybe you were already considering, seems
right.

> Both QEMU and kernel vfio-core will have changes based on this proposal except the vendor part changes.
> Who will make these changes?

/me points to the folks trying to enable this functionality...

Thanks,
Alex

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