linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3 1/6] kvm: determine memory type from VMA

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Message-ID: <ZLRvf1M3gk4jjPp0@nvidia.com>
Date:   Sun, 16 Jul 2023 19:30:23 -0300
From:   Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...dia.com>
To:     Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>
Cc:     Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>,
        Marc Zyngier <maz@...nel.org>, ankita@...dia.com,
        alex.williamson@...hat.com, naoya.horiguchi@....com,
        oliver.upton@...ux.dev, aniketa@...dia.com, cjia@...dia.com,
        kwankhede@...dia.com, targupta@...dia.com, vsethi@...dia.com,
        acurrid@...dia.com, apopple@...dia.com, jhubbard@...dia.com,
        danw@...dia.com, kvm@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        Lorenzo Pieralisi <lpieralisi@...nel.org>,
        Clint Sbisa <csbisa@...zon.com>, osamaabb@...zon.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 1/6] kvm: determine memory type from VMA

On Sun, Jul 16, 2023 at 08:09:02AM -0700, Catalin Marinas wrote:

> In terms of security for arm64 at least, Device vs Normal NC (or nc vs
> wc in Linux terminology) doesn't make much difference with the former
> occasionally being worse. The kernel would probably trust the DPDK code
> if it allows direct device access.

RDMA and DRM already allow device drivers to map WC to userspace on
demand, we expect the platform to support this.

> > So the userspace component needs to be responsible for selecting the
> > mapping, the same way using the PCI sysfs resource files today allows
> > to do that by selecting the _wc variant.
> 
> I guess the sysfs interface is just trying to work around the VFIO
> limitations.

I think just nobody has ever asked for VFIO WC support. The main
non-VM user is DPDK and none of the NIC drivers have wanted this (DPDK
applications areis more of throughput than latency focused typically)

> > This is particularly suited for the case (which used to exist, I don't
> > know if it still does) where the buffer that wants write combining
> > reside in the same BAR as registers that otherwise don't.
> 
> IIUC that's still the case for some devices (I think Jason mentioned
> some Mellanox cards).

Right, VFIO will have to allow it page-by-page

> I think this interface would help KVM when we'll need a cacheable
> mapping. For WC, we are ok without any VFIO changes.

Yes, it may be interesting to map cachable CXL memory as NORMAL_NC
into userspace for similar reasons.

Jason