Message-ID: <c064fbdc-9202-437d-80ff-6134d2a33778@nvidia.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2026 19:38:33 -0800
From: John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>
To: Joel Fernandes <joelagnelf@...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 1/29/26 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.

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.



thanks,
-- 
John Hubbard

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