Date:   Wed, 2 Nov 2022 11:05:52 -0700
From:   Elliot Berman <quic_eberman@...cinc.com>
To:     Jassi Brar <jassisinghbrar@...il.com>
CC:     Bjorn Andersson <quic_bjorande@...cinc.com>,
        Rob Herring <robh+dt@...nel.org>,
        Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzysztof.kozlowski+dt@...aro.org>,
        Murali Nalajala <quic_mnalajal@...cinc.com>,
        Trilok Soni <quic_tsoni@...cinc.com>,
        "Srivatsa Vaddagiri" <quic_svaddagi@...cinc.com>,
        Carl van Schaik <quic_cvanscha@...cinc.com>,
        Prakruthi Deepak Heragu <quic_pheragu@...cinc.com>,
        Andy Gross <agross@...nel.org>,
        Dmitry Baryshkov <dmitry.baryshkov@...aro.org>,
        <linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>,
        "Mark Rutland" <mark.rutland@....com>,
        Lorenzo Pieralisi <lorenzo.pieralisi@....com>,
        Sudeep Holla <sudeep.holla@....com>,
        "Marc Zyngier" <maz@...nel.org>, Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>,
        Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        "Srinivas Kandagatla" <srinivas.kandagatla@...aro.org>,
        Amol Maheshwari <amahesh@....qualcomm.com>,
        Kalle Valo <kvalo@...nel.org>, <devicetree@...r.kernel.org>,
        <linux-doc@...r.kernel.org>, <linux-arm-msm@...r.kernel.org>,
        <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v6 02/21] dt-bindings: Add binding for gunyah hypervisor

Hi Jassi,

On 11/1/2022 7:01 PM, Jassi Brar wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 1, 2022 at 7:12 PM Elliot Berman <quic_eberman@...cinc.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 11/1/2022 2:58 PM, Jassi Brar wrote:
>>> On Tue, Nov 1, 2022 at 3:35 PM Elliot Berman <quic_eberman@...cinc.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 11/1/2022 9:23 AM, Jassi Brar wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 10:20 PM Elliot Berman <quic_eberman@...cinc.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Jassi,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 10/27/2022 7:33 PM, Jassi Brar wrote:
>>>>>>     > On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 1:59 PM Elliot Berman
>>>>>> <quic_eberman@...cinc.com> wrote:
>>>>>>     > .....
>>>>>>     >> +
>>>>>>     >> +        gunyah-resource-mgr@0 {
>>>>>>     >> +            compatible = "gunyah-resource-manager-1-0",
>>>>>> "gunyah-resource-manager";
>>>>>>     >> +            interrupts = <GIC_SPI 3 IRQ_TYPE_EDGE_RISING>, /* TX
>>>>>> full IRQ */
>>>>>>     >> +                         <GIC_SPI 4 IRQ_TYPE_EDGE_RISING>; /* RX
>>>>>> empty IRQ */
>>>>>>     >> +            reg = <0x00000000 0x00000000>, <0x00000000 0x00000001>;
>>>>>>     >> +                  /* TX, RX cap ids */
>>>>>>     >> +        };
>>>>>>     >>
>>>>>>     > All these resources are used only by the mailbox controller driver.
>>>>>>     > So, this should be the mailbox controller node, rather than the
>>>>>>     > mailbox user.> One option is to load gunyah-resource-manager as a
>>>>>> module that relies
>>>>>>     > on the gunyah-mailbox provider. That would also avoid the "Allow
>>>>>>     > direct registration to a channel" hack patch.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> A message queue to another guest VM wouldn't be known at boot time and
>>>>>> thus couldn't be described on the devicetree.
>>>>>>
>>>>> I think you need to implement of_xlate() ... or please tell me what
>>>>> exactly you need to specify in the dt.
>>>>
>>>> Dynamically created virtual machines can't be known on the dt, so there
>>>> is nothing to specify in the DT. There couldn't be a devicetree node for
>>>> the message queue client because that client is only exists once the VM
>>>> is created by userspace.
>>>>
>>> The underlying "physical channel" is the synchronous SMC instruction,
>>> which remains 1 irrespective of the number of mailbox instances
>>> created.
>>
>> I disagree that the physical channel is the SMC instruction. Regardless
>> though, there are num_online_cpus() "physical channels" with this
>> perspective.
>>
>>> So basically you are sharing one resource among users. Why doesn't the
>>> RM request the "smc instruction" channel once and share it among
>>> users?
>>
>> I suppose in this scenario, a single mailbox channel would represent all
>> message queues? This would cause Linux to serialize *all* message queue
>> hypercalls. Sorry, I can only think negative implications.
>>
>> Error handling needs to move into clients: if a TX message queue becomes
>> full or an RX message queue becomes empty, then we'll need to return
>> error back to the client right away. The clients would need to register
>> for the RTS/RTR interrupts to know when to send/receive messages and
>> have retry error handling. If the mailbox controller retried for the
>> clients as currently proposed, then we could get into a scenario where a
>> message queue could never be ready to send/receive and thus stuck
>> forever trying to process that message. The effect here would be that
>> the mailbox controller becomes a wrapper to some SMC instructions that
>> aren't related at the SMC instruction level.
>>
>> A single channel would limit performance of SMP systems because only one
>> core could send/receive a message. There is no such limitation for
>> message queues to behave like this.
>>
> This is just an illusion. If Gunyah can handle multiple calls from a
> VM parallely, even with the "bind-client-to-channel" hack you can't
> make sure different channels run on different cpu cores.  If you are
> ok with that, you could simply populate a mailbox controller with N
> channels and allocate them in any order the clients ask.

I wanted to make sure I understood the ask here completely. On what 
basis is N chosen? Who would be the mailbox clients?

Thanks,
Elliot

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