linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 18/22] mm: mark DEVICE

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Date:   Wed, 26 Jun 2019 07:45:54 +0200
From:   Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
To:     John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>
Cc:     Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...lanox.com>,
        Ira Weiny <ira.weiny@...el.com>,
        Ralph Campbell <rcampbell@...dia.com>,
        "linux-nvdimm@...ts.01.org" <linux-nvdimm@...ts.01.org>,
        "nouveau@...ts.freedesktop.org" <nouveau@...ts.freedesktop.org>,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        "dri-devel@...ts.freedesktop.org" <dri-devel@...ts.freedesktop.org>,
        "linux-mm@...ck.org" <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        Jérôme Glisse <jglisse@...hat.com>,
        Ben Skeggs <bskeggs@...hat.com>,
        "linux-pci@...r.kernel.org" <linux-pci@...r.kernel.org>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 18/22] mm: mark DEVICE_PUBLIC as broken

On Tue 25-06-19 20:15:28, John Hubbard wrote:
> On 6/19/19 12:27 PM, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 06:23:04PM -0700, John Hubbard wrote:
> >> On 6/13/19 5:43 PM, Ira Weiny wrote:
> >>> On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 07:58:29PM +0000, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> >>>> On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 12:53:02PM -0700, Ralph Campbell wrote:
> >>>>>
> >> ...
> >>> So I think it is ok.  Frankly I was wondering if we should remove the public
> >>> type altogether but conceptually it seems ok.  But I don't see any users of it
> >>> so...  should we get rid of it in the code rather than turning the config off?
> >>>
> >>> Ira
> >>
> >> That seems reasonable. I recall that the hope was for those IBM Power 9
> >> systems to use _PUBLIC, as they have hardware-based coherent device (GPU)
> >> memory, and so the memory really is visible to the CPU. And the IBM team
> >> was thinking of taking advantage of it. But I haven't seen anything on
> >> that front for a while.
> > 
> > Does anyone know who those people are and can we encourage them to
> > send some patches? :)
> > 
> 
> I asked about this, and it seems that the idea was: DEVICE_PUBLIC was there
> in order to provide an alternative way to do things (such as migrate memory
> to and from a device), in case the combination of existing and near-future
> NUMA APIs was insufficient. This probably came as a follow-up to the early
> 2017-ish conversations about NUMA, in which the linux-mm recommendation was
> "try using HMM mechanisms, and if those are inadequate, then maybe we can
> look at enhancing NUMA so that it has better handling of advanced (GPU-like)
> devices".

Yes that was the original idea. It sounds so much better to use a common
framework rather than awkward special cased cpuless NUMA nodes with
a weird semantic. User of the neither of the two has shown up so I guess
that the envisioned HW just didn't materialized. Or has there been a
completely different approach chosen?

> In the end, however, _PUBLIC was never used, nor does anyone in the local
> (NVIDIA + IBM) kernel vicinity seem to have plans to use it.  So it really
> does seem safe to remove, although of course it's good to start with 
> BROKEN and see if anyone pops up and complains.

Well, I do not really see much of a difference. Preserving an unused
code which doesn't have any user in sight just adds a maintenance burden
whether the code depends on BROKEN or not. We can always revert patches
which remove the code once a real user shows up.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs