Message-ID: <70d88203-2fe1-4bde-b254-51e8107744eb@nvidia.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2026 16:14:14 -0500
From: Joel Fernandes <joelagnelf@...dia.com>
To: John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>
Cc: Danilo Krummrich <dakr@...nel.org>, Zhi Wang <zhiw@...dia.com>,
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Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC v6 05/26] nova-core: mm: Add support to use PRAMIN
 windows to write to VRAM



On 1/29/2026 10:38 PM, John Hubbard wrote:
> On 1/29/26 5:59 PM, Joel Fernandes wrote:
>> On 1/29/26 8:12 PM, John Hubbard wrote:
>>> On 1/29/26 4:26 PM, Joel Fernandes wrote:
>>>> Based on the below discussion and research, I came up with some deadlock
>>>> scenarios that we need to handle in the v6 series of these patches.
>>>> [...]
>>>> memory allocations under locks that we need in the dma-fence signaling
>>>> critical path (when doing the virtual memory map/unmap)
>>>
>>> unmap? Are you seeing any allocations happening during unmap? I don't
>>> immediately see any, but that sounds surprising.
>>
>> Not allocations but we are acquiring locks during unmap. My understanding
>> is (at least some) unmaps have to also be done in the dma fence signaling
>> critical path (the run stage), but Danilo/you can correct me if I am wrong
>> on that. We cannot avoid all locking but those same locks cannot be held in
>> any other paths which do a memory allocation (as mentioned in one of the
>> deadlock scenarios), that is probably the main thing to check for unmap.
>>
> 
> Right, OK we are on the same page now: no allocations happening on unmap,
> but it can still deadlock, because the driver is typically going to
> use a single lock to protect calls both map and unmap-related calls
> to the buddy allocator.

Yes exactly!

> 
> For the deadlock above, I think a good way to break that deadlock is
> to not allow taking that lock in a fence signaling calling path.
> 
> So during an unmap, instead of "lock, unmap/free, unlock" it should
> move the item to a deferred-free list, which is processed separately.
> Of course, this is a little complex, because the allocation and reclaim
> has to be aware of such lists if they get large.
Yes, also avoiding GFP_KERNEL allocations while holding any of these mm locks
(whichever we take during map). The GPU buddy actually does GFP_KERNEL
allocations internally which is problematic.

Some solutions / next steps:

1. allocating (VRAM and system memory) outside mm locks just before acquiring them.

2. pre-allocating both VRAM and system memory needed, before the DMA fence
critical paths (The issue is also to figure out how much memory to pre-allocate
for the page table pages based on the VM_BIND request. I think we can analyze
the page tables in the submit stage to make an estimate).

3. Unfortunately, I am using gpu-buddy when allocating a VA range in the Vmm
(called virt_buddy), which itself does GFP_KERNEL memory allocations in the
allocate path. I am not sure what do yet about this. ISTR the maple tree also
has similar issues.

4. Using non-reclaimable memory allocations where pre-allocation or
pre-allocated memory pools is not possible (I'd like to avoid this #4 so we
don't fail allocations when memory is scarce).

Will work on these issues for the v7. Thanks,

--
Joel Fernandes

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