Date: Tue, 21 May 2024 10:43:34 +0200
From: Maxime Ripard <mripard@...hat.com>
To: nicolas.dufresne@...labora.corp-partner.google.com
Cc: Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@...asonboard.com>, 
	Bryan O'Donoghue <bryan.odonoghue@...aro.org>, Dmitry Baryshkov <dmitry.baryshkov@...aro.org>, 
	Hans de Goede <hdegoede@...hat.com>, Sumit Semwal <sumit.semwal@...aro.org>, 
	Benjamin Gaignard <benjamin.gaignard@...labora.com>, Brian Starkey <Brian.Starkey@....com>, 
	John Stultz <jstultz@...gle.com>, "T.J. Mercier" <tjmercier@...gle.com>, 
	Christian König <christian.koenig@....com>, Lennart Poettering <mzxreary@...inter.de>, 
	Robert Mader <robert.mader@...labora.com>, Sebastien Bacher <sebastien.bacher@...onical.com>, 
	Linux Media Mailing List <linux-media@...r.kernel.org>, 
	"dri-devel@...ts.freedesktop.org" <dri-devel@...ts.freedesktop.org>, linaro-mm-sig@...ts.linaro.org, 
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, Milan Zamazal <mzamazal@...hat.com>, 
	Andrey Konovalov <andrey.konovalov.ynk@...il.com>
Subject: Re: Safety of opening up /dev/dma_heap/* to physically present users
 (udev uaccess tag) ?

On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 01:11:51PM GMT, nicolas.dufresne@...labora.corp-partner.google.com wrote:
> Le jeudi 16 mai 2024 à 14:27 +0300, Laurent Pinchart a écrit :
> > Hi Nicolas,
> > 
> > On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 01:43:58PM -0400, nicolas.dufresne@...labora.corp-partner.google.com wrote:
> > > Le mardi 14 mai 2024 à 23:42 +0300, Laurent Pinchart a écrit :
> > > > > You'll hit the same limitation as we hit in GStreamer, which is that KMS driver
> > > > > only offer allocation for render buffers and most of them are missing allocators
> > > > > for YUV buffers, even though they can import in these formats. (kms allocators,
> > > > > except dumb, which has other issues, are format aware).
> > > > 
> > > > My experience on Arm platforms is that the KMS drivers offer allocation
> > > > for scanout buffers, not render buffers, and mostly using the dumb
> > > > allocator API. If the KMS device can scan out YUV natively, YUV buffer
> > > > allocation should be supported. Am I missing something here ?
> > > 
> > > There is two APIs, Dumb is the legacy allocation API, only used by display
> > 
> > Is it legacy only ? I understand the dumb buffers API to be officially
> > supported, to allocate scanout buffers suitable for software rendering.
> > 
> > > drivers indeed, and the API does not include a pixel format or a modifier. The
> > > allocation of YUV buffer has been made through a small hack, 
> > > 
> > >   bpp = number of bits per component (of luma plane if multiple planes)
> > >   width = width
> > >   height = height * X
> > > 
> > > Where X will vary, "3 / 2" is used for 420 subsampling, "2" for 422 and "3" for
> > > 444. It is far from idea, requires deep knowledge of each formats in the
> > > application
> > 
> > I'm not sure I see that as an issue, but our experiences and uses cases
> > may vary :-)
> 
> Its extra burden, and does not scale to all available pixel formats. My reply
> was for readers education as I feel like a lot of linux-media dev don't have a
> clue of what is going on at the rendering side. This ensure a minimum knowledge
> to everyone commenting.
> 
> And yes, within the GFX community, Dumb allocation is to be killed and
> replacement completely in the future, it simply does not have a complete
> replacement yet.
> 
> > 
> > > and cannot allocate each planes seperatly.
> > 
> > For semi-planar or planar formats, unless I'm mistaken, you can either
> > allocate a single buffer and use it with appropriate offsets when
> > constructing your framebuffer (with DRM_IOCTL_MODE_ADDFB2), or allocate
> > one buffer per plane.
> 
> We have use cases were single allocation is undesirable, but I don't really feel
> like this is important enough for me to type this explanation. Ping me if you
> care.
> > 
> > > The second is to use the driver specific allocation API. This is then abstracted
> > > by GBM. This allows allocating render buffers with notably modifiers and/or use
> > > cases. But no support for YUV formats or multi-planar formats.
> > 
> > GBM is the way to go for render buffers indeed. It has been designed
> > with only graphics buffer management use cases in mind, so it's
> > unfortunately not an option as a generic allocator, at least in its
> > current form.
> > 
> 
> What I perhaps should have highlighted that is that all these allocators in the
> GFX (called DRM, but meh) subsystem abstract away some deep knowledge of the HW
> requirements. Heaps are lower level APIs that assume that userspace have this
> knowledge. The Android and ChromeOS solution is to take the implementation from
> the kernel and move it into userspace, see minigbm from chromeos, or gralloc
> from Android. As these two projects are device centric, they are not usable on
> generic Linux. Heaps might have some future, but not without other piece of the
> puzzle.
> 
> To come back to you wanting heaps in libcamera, because it makes them better for
> rendered or display. Well today this is a lie you make to yourself, because this
> is just a tiny bit of the puzzle, it is pure luck if you allocate dmabuf is
> usable but a foreign device. At the end of the day, this is just a fallback to
> satisfy that application are not forced to allocate that memory in libcamera.

I mean, it's pure luck, but can you point to any platform supported
upstream where it wouldn't work?

> Thus, I strongly recommend the udmabuf in the short term. Finally, moving to
> heaps when the reported issue is resolved, as then it gives more options and
> reduce the number of layers.

udmabuf wouldn't work with any platform without an IOMMU. We have plenty
of those.

All things considered, while I agree that it isn't the ideal solution,
we really don't have a better (ie, works on a larger set of platforms)
solution at the moment or in the next 5 years.

Maxime

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