Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 09/16] Enable message delivery via IRQs

[Paul Brook]

> > [*] A simple unidirectional dma request line is suitable for qmu_irq. A
> > DMA system that transfers data outside of memory read/write transactions
> > is not. e.g. ISA effectively defines a regular memory bus plus 8
> > bidirectional data streams (aka DMA channels). These are multiplexed
> > over the same physical pins, but logically distinct. The DMA channels
> > could either be bundled up into the ISA bus interface, or modelled as
> > links between devices and the DMA controller.
> 
> Very very interesting. There's some out of band data related to DMA
> (bus errors, IOMMU faults, ISA DREQ) which hasn't been covered in
> previous Generic DMA proposals.

I suspect you're confusing two different concepts - bus-master DMA (memory 
accesses generated by devices) v.s. IO channel DMA (out of band data stream 
between a device and a third party DMA engine). Despite both being called 
"DMA", they significantly different beasts. The IO channel DMA master is 
effectively a bridge between the memory bus (accessed via bus-master DMA) and 
the device IO channel.

Note that actual IO channel DMA is relatively rare. While many embedded 
devices still have a DMA engine this tends to generate regular memory 
accesses, which are then programmed to access a memory mapped FIFO. This 
shouldn't need any special magic to implement, typically just a simple 
qemu_irq control line.

> Maybe all we need is a generic side
> band link, which would be usable for point to point (qemu_irq,
> coalescing, messages) and bus channels?

We may want to consider a common mechanism for mapping links between devices. 
i.e some way of saying "Connect device X port N to device Y port M". In the 
case of traditional interrupts each IRQ source or sink would be a "port". For 
a bus system you'd probably want to connect them all to a [virtual] bus 
arbiter object.

This should allow the mapping core to verify that e.g. you're not connecting a 
qemu_irq to something expecting an apic_message, preferably without knowing or 
caring how either of those work.

In theory I guess you could also use the same mechanism to connect network 
devices to their host interface, etc.  I haven't thought this bit through 
fully, so this may be excessively clever.

Paul