Re: [Qemu-devel] vhost, iova, and dirty page tracking

[Jason Wang]

On 2019/9/16 上午9:51, Tian, Kevin wrote:
> Hi, Jason
>
> We had a discussion about dirty page tracking in VFIO, when vIOMMU
> is enabled:
>
> https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2019-09/msg02690.html
>
> It's actually a similar model as vhost - Qemu cannot interpose the fast-path
> DMAs thus relies on the kernel part to track and report dirty page information.
> Currently Qemu tracks dirty pages in GFN level, thus demanding a translation
> from IOVA to GPA. Then the open in our discussion is where this translation
> should happen. Doing the translation in kernel implies a device iotlb flavor,
> which is what vhost implements today. It requires potentially large tracking
> structures in the host kernel, but leveraging the existing log_sync flow in 
> Qemu.
> On the other hand, Qemu may perform log_sync for every removal of IOVA
> mapping and then do the translation itself, then avoiding the GPA awareness
> in the kernel side. It needs some change to current Qemu log-sync flow, and
> may bring more overhead if IOVA is frequently unmapped.
>
> So we'd like to hear about your opinions, especially about how you came
> down to the current iotlb approach for vhost.


We don't consider too much in the point when introducing vhost. And 
before IOTLB, vhost has already know GPA through its mem table 
(GPA->HVA). So it's nature and easier to track dirty pages at GPA level 
then it won't any changes in the existing ABI.

For VFIO case, the only advantages of using GPA is that the log can then 
be shared among all the devices that belongs to the VM. Otherwise 
syncing through IOVA is cleaner.

Thanks

> p.s. Alex's comment is also copied here from original thread.
>
> > So vhost must then be configuring a listener across system memory
> > rather than only against the device AddressSpace like we do in vfio,
> > such that it get's log_sync() callbacks for the actual GPA space rather
> > than only the IOVA space.  OTOH, QEMU could understand that the device
> > AddressSpace has a translate function and apply the IOVA dirty bits to
> > the system memory AddressSpace.  Wouldn't it make more sense for
> > QEMU
> > to perform a log_sync() prior to removing a MemoryRegionSection within
> > an AddressSpace and update the GPA rather than pushing GPA awareness
> > and potentially large tracking structures into the host kernel?
> Thanks
> Kevin