netdev - Re: [PATCH vhost v11 03/10] virtio_ring: introduce virtqueue_set

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Message-ID: <20230713104542-mutt-send-email-mst@kernel.org>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2023 10:47:23 -0400
From: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>
To: Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>
Cc: Xuan Zhuo <xuanzhuo@...ux.alibaba.com>,
	virtualization@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
	Jason Wang <jasowang@...hat.com>,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
	Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>,
	Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>, Paolo Abeni <pabeni@...hat.com>,
	Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...nel.org>,
	Daniel Borkmann <daniel@...earbox.net>,
	Jesper Dangaard Brouer <hawk@...nel.org>,
	John Fastabend <john.fastabend@...il.com>, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
	bpf@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH vhost v11 03/10] virtio_ring: introduce
 virtqueue_set_premapped()

On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 04:14:45AM -0700, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 10, 2023 at 11:42:30AM +0800, Xuan Zhuo wrote:
> > This helper allows the driver change the dma mode to premapped mode.
> > Under the premapped mode, the virtio core do not do dma mapping
> > internally.
> > 
> > This just work when the use_dma_api is true. If the use_dma_api is false,
> > the dma options is not through the DMA APIs, that is not the standard
> > way of the linux kernel.
> 
> I have a hard time parsing this.
> 
> More importantly having two modes seems very error prone going down
> the route.  If the premapping is so important, why don't we do it
> always?

There are a gazillion virtio drivers and most of them just use the
virtio API, without bothering with these micro-optimizations.  virtio
already tracks addresses so mapping/unmapping them for DMA is easier
done in the core.  It's only networking and only with XDP where the
difference becomes measureable.

-- 
MST