diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/dma-buf-sharing.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/dma-buf-sharing.txt | 98 |
1 files changed, 91 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/dma-buf-sharing.txt b/Documentation/dma-buf-sharing.txt index 3bbd5c51605a..5ff4d2b84f72 100644 --- a/Documentation/dma-buf-sharing.txt +++ b/Documentation/dma-buf-sharing.txt @@ -29,13 +29,6 @@ The buffer-user in memory, mapped into its own address space, so it can access the same area of memory. -*IMPORTANT*: [see https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/12/20/211 for more details] -For this first version, A buffer shared using the dma_buf sharing API: -- *may* be exported to user space using "mmap" *ONLY* by exporter, outside of - this framework. -- with this new iteration of the dma-buf api cpu access from the kernel has been - enable, see below for the details. - dma-buf operations for device dma only -------------------------------------- @@ -313,6 +306,83 @@ Access to a dma_buf from the kernel context involves three steps: enum dma_data_direction dir); +Direct Userspace Access/mmap Support +------------------------------------ + +Being able to mmap an export dma-buf buffer object has 2 main use-cases: +- CPU fallback processing in a pipeline and +- supporting existing mmap interfaces in importers. + +1. CPU fallback processing in a pipeline + + In many processing pipelines it is sometimes required that the cpu can access + the data in a dma-buf (e.g. for thumbnail creation, snapshots, ...). To avoid + the need to handle this specially in userspace frameworks for buffer sharing + it's ideal if the dma_buf fd itself can be used to access the backing storage + from userspace using mmap. + + Furthermore Android's ION framework already supports this (and is otherwise + rather similar to dma-buf from a userspace consumer side with using fds as + handles, too). So it's beneficial to support this in a similar fashion on + dma-buf to have a good transition path for existing Android userspace. + + No special interfaces, userspace simply calls mmap on the dma-buf fd. + +2. Supporting existing mmap interfaces in exporters + + Similar to the motivation for kernel cpu access it is again important that + the userspace code of a given importing subsystem can use the same interfaces + with a imported dma-buf buffer object as with a native buffer object. This is + especially important for drm where the userspace part of contemporary OpenGL, + X, and other drivers is huge, and reworking them to use a different way to + mmap a buffer rather invasive. + + The assumption in the current dma-buf interfaces is that redirecting the + initial mmap is all that's needed. A survey of some of the existing + subsystems shows that no driver seems to do any nefarious thing like syncing + up with outstanding asynchronous processing on the device or allocating + special resources at fault time. So hopefully this is good enough, since + adding interfaces to intercept pagefaults and allow pte shootdowns would + increase the complexity quite a bit. + + Interface: + int dma_buf_mmap(struct dma_buf *, struct vm_area_struct *, + unsigned long); + + If the importing subsystem simply provides a special-purpose mmap call to set + up a mapping in userspace, calling do_mmap with dma_buf->file will equally + achieve that for a dma-buf object. + +3. Implementation notes for exporters + + Because dma-buf buffers have invariant size over their lifetime, the dma-buf + core checks whether a vma is too large and rejects such mappings. The + exporter hence does not need to duplicate this check. + + Because existing importing subsystems might presume coherent mappings for + userspace, the exporter needs to set up a coherent mapping. If that's not + possible, it needs to fake coherency by manually shooting down ptes when + leaving the cpu domain and flushing caches at fault time. Note that all the + dma_buf files share the same anon inode, hence the exporter needs to replace + the dma_buf file stored in vma->vm_file with it's own if pte shootdown is + requred. This is because the kernel uses the underlying inode's address_space + for vma tracking (and hence pte tracking at shootdown time with + unmap_mapping_range). + + If the above shootdown dance turns out to be too expensive in certain + scenarios, we can extend dma-buf with a more explicit cache tracking scheme + for userspace mappings. But the current assumption is that using mmap is + always a slower path, so some inefficiencies should be acceptable. + + Exporters that shoot down mappings (for any reasons) shall not do any + synchronization at fault time with outstanding device operations. + Synchronization is an orthogonal issue to sharing the backing storage of a + buffer and hence should not be handled by dma-buf itself. This is explictly + mentioned here because many people seem to want something like this, but if + different exporters handle this differently, buffer sharing can fail in + interesting ways depending upong the exporter (if userspace starts depending + upon this implicit synchronization). + Miscellaneous notes ------------------- @@ -336,6 +406,20 @@ Miscellaneous notes the exporting driver to create a dmabuf fd must provide a way to let userspace control setting of O_CLOEXEC flag passed in to dma_buf_fd(). +- If an exporter needs to manually flush caches and hence needs to fake + coherency for mmap support, it needs to be able to zap all the ptes pointing + at the backing storage. Now linux mm needs a struct address_space associated + with the struct file stored in vma->vm_file to do that with the function + unmap_mapping_range. But the dma_buf framework only backs every dma_buf fd + with the anon_file struct file, i.e. all dma_bufs share the same file. + + Hence exporters need to setup their own file (and address_space) association + by setting vma->vm_file and adjusting vma->vm_pgoff in the dma_buf mmap + callback. In the specific case of a gem driver the exporter could use the + shmem file already provided by gem (and set vm_pgoff = 0). Exporters can then + zap ptes by unmapping the corresponding range of the struct address_space + associated with their own file. + References: [1] struct dma_buf_ops in include/linux/dma-buf.h [2] All interfaces mentioned above defined in include/linux/dma-buf.h |
