Re: [Qemu-devel] [Qemu-block] [PATCH v3 3/6] block: Introduce bdrv_dma_map and bdrv_dma_unmap

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 04:03:57PM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 12/07/2017 03:07, Fam Zheng wrote:
> > On Tue, 07/11 12:28, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> >> On 11/07/2017 12:05, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> >>> On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 05:08:56PM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> >>>> On 10/07/2017 17:07, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> >>>>> On Wed, Jul 05, 2017 at 09:36:32PM +0800, Fam Zheng wrote:
> >>>>>> Allow block driver to map and unmap a buffer for later I/O, as a 
> >>>>>> performance
> >>>>>> hint.
> >>>>> The name blk_dma_map() is confusing since other "dma" APIs like
> >>>>> dma_addr_t and dma_blk_io() deal with guest physical addresses instead
> >>>>> of host addresses.  They are about DMA to/from guest RAM.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Have you considered hiding this cached mapping in block/nvme.c so that
> >>>>> it isn't exposed?  block/nvme.c could keep the last buffer mapped and
> >>>>> callers would get the performance benefit without a new blk_dma_map()
> >>>>> API.
> >>>>
> >>>> One buffer is enough for qemu-img bench, but not for more complex cases
> >>>> (e.g. fio).
> >>>
> >>> I don't see any other blk_dma_map() callers.
> >>
> >> Indeed, the fio plugin is not part of this series, but it also used
> >> blk_dma_map.  Without it, performance is awful.
> > 
> > How many buffers does fio use, typically? If it's not too many, 
> > block/nvme.c can
> > cache the last N buffers. I'm with Stefan that hiding the mapping logic from
> > block layer callers makes a nicer API, especially such that qemu-img is much
> > easier to maintain good performance across subcommmands.
> 
> It depends on the queue depth.
> 
> I think the API addition is necessary, otherwise we wouldn't have added
> the RAMBlockNotifier which is a layering violation that does the same
> thing (create permanent HVA->IOVA mappings).  In fact, the
> RAMBlockNotifier could be moved out of nvme.c and made to use
> blk_dma_map/unmap, though I'm not proposing to do it now.
> 
> I don't think qemu-img convert and dd are impacted by IOMMU map/unmap as
> heavily as bench, because they operate with queue depth 1.  But adding
> map/unmap there would not be hard.

I'm not against an API existing for this.  I would just ask:

1. It's documented so the purpose and semantics are clear.
2. The name cannot be confused with dma-helpers.c APIs.

Maybe blk_register_buf() or blk_add_buf_hint()?

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