| ========================================== | |
| I915 VM_BIND feature design and use cases | |
| ========================================== | |
| VM_BIND feature | |
| ================ | |
| DRM_I915_GEM_VM_BIND/UNBIND ioctls allows UMD to bind/unbind GEM buffer | |
| objects (BOs) or sections of a BOs at specified GPU virtual addresses on a | |
| specified address space (VM). These mappings (also referred to as persistent | |
| mappings) will be persistent across multiple GPU submissions (execbuf calls) | |
| issued by the UMD, without user having to provide a list of all required | |
| mappings during each submission (as required by older execbuf mode). | |
| The VM_BIND/UNBIND calls allow UMDs to request a timeline out fence for | |
| signaling the completion of bind/unbind operation. | |
| VM_BIND feature is advertised to user via I915_PARAM_VM_BIND_VERSION. | |
| User has to opt-in for VM_BIND mode of binding for an address space (VM) | |
| during VM creation time via I915_VM_CREATE_FLAGS_USE_VM_BIND extension. | |
| VM_BIND/UNBIND ioctl calls executed on different CPU threads concurrently are | |
| not ordered. Furthermore, parts of the VM_BIND/UNBIND operations can be done | |
| asynchronously, when valid out fence is specified. | |
| VM_BIND features include: | |
| * Multiple Virtual Address (VA) mappings can map to the same physical pages | |
| of an object (aliasing). | |
| * VA mapping can map to a partial section of the BO (partial binding). | |
| * Support capture of persistent mappings in the dump upon GPU error. | |
| * Support for userptr gem objects (no special uapi is required for this). | |
| TLB flush consideration | |
| ------------------------ | |
| The i915 driver flushes the TLB for each submission and when an object's | |
| pages are released. The VM_BIND/UNBIND operation will not do any additional | |
| TLB flush. Any VM_BIND mapping added will be in the working set for subsequent | |
| submissions on that VM and will not be in the working set for currently running | |
| batches (which would require additional TLB flushes, which is not supported). | |
| Execbuf ioctl in VM_BIND mode | |
| ------------------------------- | |
| A VM in VM_BIND mode will not support older execbuf mode of binding. | |
| The execbuf ioctl handling in VM_BIND mode differs significantly from the | |
| older execbuf2 ioctl (See struct drm_i915_gem_execbuffer2). | |
| Hence, a new execbuf3 ioctl has been added to support VM_BIND mode. (See | |
| struct drm_i915_gem_execbuffer3). The execbuf3 ioctl will not accept any | |
| execlist. Hence, no support for implicit sync. It is expected that the below | |
| work will be able to support requirements of object dependency setting in all | |
| use cases: | |
| "dma-buf: Add an API for exporting sync files" | |
| (https://lwn.net/Articles/859290/) | |
| The new execbuf3 ioctl only works in VM_BIND mode and the VM_BIND mode only | |
| works with execbuf3 ioctl for submission. All BOs mapped on that VM (through | |
| VM_BIND call) at the time of execbuf3 call are deemed required for that | |
| submission. | |
| The execbuf3 ioctl directly specifies the batch addresses instead of as | |
| object handles as in execbuf2 ioctl. The execbuf3 ioctl will also not | |
| support many of the older features like in/out/submit fences, fence array, | |
| default gem context and many more (See struct drm_i915_gem_execbuffer3). | |
| In VM_BIND mode, VA allocation is completely managed by the user instead of | |
| the i915 driver. Hence all VA assignment, eviction are not applicable in | |
| VM_BIND mode. Also, for determining object activeness, VM_BIND mode will not | |
| be using the i915_vma active reference tracking. It will instead use dma-resv | |
| object for that (See `VM_BIND dma_resv usage`_). | |
| So, a lot of existing code supporting execbuf2 ioctl, like relocations, VA | |
| evictions, vma lookup table, implicit sync, vma active reference tracking etc., | |
| are not applicable for execbuf3 ioctl. Hence, all execbuf3 specific handling | |
| should be in a separate file and only functionalities common to these ioctls | |
| can be the shared code where possible. | |
| VM_PRIVATE objects | |
| ------------------- | |
| By default, BOs can be mapped on multiple VMs and can also be dma-buf | |
| exported. Hence these BOs are referred to as Shared BOs. | |
| During each execbuf submission, the request fence must be added to the | |
| dma-resv fence list of all shared BOs mapped on the VM. | |
| VM_BIND feature introduces an optimization where user can create BO which | |
| is private to a specified VM via I915_GEM_CREATE_EXT_VM_PRIVATE flag during | |
| BO creation. Unlike Shared BOs, these VM private BOs can only be mapped on | |
| the VM they are private to and can't be dma-buf exported. | |
| All private BOs of a VM share the dma-resv object. Hence during each execbuf | |
| submission, they need only one dma-resv fence list updated. Thus, the fast | |
| path (where required mappings are already bound) submission latency is O(1) | |
| w.r.t the number of VM private BOs. | |
| VM_BIND locking hierarchy | |
| ------------------------- | |
| The locking design here supports the older (execlist based) execbuf mode, the | |
| newer VM_BIND mode, the VM_BIND mode with GPU page faults and possible future | |
| system allocator support (See `Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) support`_). | |
| The older execbuf mode and the newer VM_BIND mode without page faults manages | |
| residency of backing storage using dma_fence. The VM_BIND mode with page faults | |
| and the system allocator support do not use any dma_fence at all. | |
| VM_BIND locking order is as below. | |
| 1) Lock-A: A vm_bind mutex will protect vm_bind lists. This lock is taken in | |
| vm_bind/vm_unbind ioctl calls, in the execbuf path and while releasing the | |
| mapping. | |
| In future, when GPU page faults are supported, we can potentially use a | |
| rwsem instead, so that multiple page fault handlers can take the read side | |
| lock to lookup the mapping and hence can run in parallel. | |
| The older execbuf mode of binding do not need this lock. | |
| 2) Lock-B: The object's dma-resv lock will protect i915_vma state and needs to | |
| be held while binding/unbinding a vma in the async worker and while updating | |
| dma-resv fence list of an object. Note that private BOs of a VM will all | |
| share a dma-resv object. | |
| The future system allocator support will use the HMM prescribed locking | |
| instead. | |
| 3) Lock-C: Spinlock/s to protect some of the VM's lists like the list of | |
| invalidated vmas (due to eviction and userptr invalidation) etc. | |
| When GPU page faults are supported, the execbuf path do not take any of these | |
| locks. There we will simply smash the new batch buffer address into the ring and | |
| then tell the scheduler run that. The lock taking only happens from the page | |
| fault handler, where we take lock-A in read mode, whichever lock-B we need to | |
| find the backing storage (dma_resv lock for gem objects, and hmm/core mm for | |
| system allocator) and some additional locks (lock-D) for taking care of page | |
| table races. Page fault mode should not need to ever manipulate the vm lists, | |
| so won't ever need lock-C. | |
| VM_BIND LRU handling | |
| --------------------- | |
| We need to ensure VM_BIND mapped objects are properly LRU tagged to avoid | |
| performance degradation. We will also need support for bulk LRU movement of | |
| VM_BIND objects to avoid additional latencies in execbuf path. | |
| The page table pages are similar to VM_BIND mapped objects (See | |
| `Evictable page table allocations`_) and are maintained per VM and needs to | |
| be pinned in memory when VM is made active (ie., upon an execbuf call with | |
| that VM). So, bulk LRU movement of page table pages is also needed. | |
| VM_BIND dma_resv usage | |
| ----------------------- | |
| Fences needs to be added to all VM_BIND mapped objects. During each execbuf | |
| submission, they are added with DMA_RESV_USAGE_BOOKKEEP usage to prevent | |
| over sync (See enum dma_resv_usage). One can override it with either | |
| DMA_RESV_USAGE_READ or DMA_RESV_USAGE_WRITE usage during explicit object | |
| dependency setting. | |
| Note that DRM_I915_GEM_WAIT and DRM_I915_GEM_BUSY ioctls do not check for | |
| DMA_RESV_USAGE_BOOKKEEP usage and hence should not be used for end of batch | |
| check. Instead, the execbuf3 out fence should be used for end of batch check | |
| (See struct drm_i915_gem_execbuffer3). | |
| Also, in VM_BIND mode, use dma-resv apis for determining object activeness | |
| (See dma_resv_test_signaled() and dma_resv_wait_timeout()) and do not use the | |
| older i915_vma active reference tracking which is deprecated. This should be | |
| easier to get it working with the current TTM backend. | |
| Mesa use case | |
| -------------- | |
| VM_BIND can potentially reduce the CPU overhead in Mesa (both Vulkan and Iris), | |
| hence improving performance of CPU-bound applications. It also allows us to | |
| implement Vulkan's Sparse Resources. With increasing GPU hardware performance, | |
| reducing CPU overhead becomes more impactful. | |
| Other VM_BIND use cases | |
| ======================== | |
| Long running Compute contexts | |
| ------------------------------ | |
| Usage of dma-fence expects that they complete in reasonable amount of time. | |
| Compute on the other hand can be long running. Hence it is appropriate for | |
| compute to use user/memory fence (See `User/Memory Fence`_) and dma-fence usage | |
| must be limited to in-kernel consumption only. | |
| Where GPU page faults are not available, kernel driver upon buffer invalidation | |
| will initiate a suspend (preemption) of long running context, finish the | |
| invalidation, revalidate the BO and then resume the compute context. This is | |
| done by having a per-context preempt fence which is enabled when someone tries | |
| to wait on it and triggers the context preemption. | |
| User/Memory Fence | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| User/Memory fence is a <address, value> pair. To signal the user fence, the | |
| specified value will be written at the specified virtual address and wakeup the | |
| waiting process. User fence can be signaled either by the GPU or kernel async | |
| worker (like upon bind completion). User can wait on a user fence with a new | |
| user fence wait ioctl. | |
| Here is some prior work on this: | |
| https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/349417/ | |
| Low Latency Submission | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| Allows compute UMD to directly submit GPU jobs instead of through execbuf | |
| ioctl. This is made possible by VM_BIND is not being synchronized against | |
| execbuf. VM_BIND allows bind/unbind of mappings required for the directly | |
| submitted jobs. | |
| Debugger | |
| --------- | |
| With debug event interface user space process (debugger) is able to keep track | |
| of and act upon resources created by another process (debugged) and attached | |
| to GPU via vm_bind interface. | |
| GPU page faults | |
| ---------------- | |
| GPU page faults when supported (in future), will only be supported in the | |
| VM_BIND mode. While both the older execbuf mode and the newer VM_BIND mode of | |
| binding will require using dma-fence to ensure residency, the GPU page faults | |
| mode when supported, will not use any dma-fence as residency is purely managed | |
| by installing and removing/invalidating page table entries. | |
| Page level hints settings | |
| -------------------------- | |
| VM_BIND allows any hints setting per mapping instead of per BO. Possible hints | |
| include placement and atomicity. Sub-BO level placement hint will be even more | |
| relevant with upcoming GPU on-demand page fault support. | |
| Page level Cache/CLOS settings | |
| ------------------------------- | |
| VM_BIND allows cache/CLOS settings per mapping instead of per BO. | |
| Evictable page table allocations | |
| --------------------------------- | |
| Make pagetable allocations evictable and manage them similar to VM_BIND | |
| mapped objects. Page table pages are similar to persistent mappings of a | |
| VM (difference here are that the page table pages will not have an i915_vma | |
| structure and after swapping pages back in, parent page link needs to be | |
| updated). | |
| Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) support | |
| ------------------------------------ | |
| VM_BIND interface can be used to map system memory directly (without gem BO | |
| abstraction) using the HMM interface. SVM is only supported with GPU page | |
| faults enabled. | |
| VM_BIND UAPI | |
| ============= | |
| .. kernel-doc:: Documentation/gpu/rfc/i915_vm_bind.h |