Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 06/11] nvdimm acpi: initialize the resource used by NVDIMM ACPI

From: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>
To: Xiao Guangrong <guangrong.xiao@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Igor Mammedov <imammedo@redhat.com>,
	ehabkost@redhat.com, kvm@vger.kernel.org, gleb@kernel.org,
	mtosatti@redhat.com, qemu-devel@nongnu.org, stefanha@redhat.com,
	pbonzini@redhat.com, dan.j.williams@intel.com, rth@twiddle.net
Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 06/11] nvdimm acpi: initialize the resource used by NVDIMM ACPI
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:36:45 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20160215133514-mutt-send-email-mst@redhat.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <56C1A4D2.3060402@linux.intel.com>

On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 06:13:38PM +0800, Xiao Guangrong wrote:
> 
> 
> On 02/15/2016 05:18 PM, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> >On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 10:11:05AM +0100, Igor Mammedov wrote:
> >>On Sun, 14 Feb 2016 13:57:27 +0800
> >>Xiao Guangrong <guangrong.xiao@linux.intel.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>>On 02/08/2016 07:03 PM, Igor Mammedov wrote:
> >>>>On Wed, 13 Jan 2016 02:50:05 +0800
> >>>>Xiao Guangrong <guangrong.xiao@linux.intel.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>32 bits IO port starting from 0x0a18 in guest is reserved for NVDIMM
> >>>>>ACPI emulation. The table, NVDIMM_DSM_MEM_FILE, will be patched into
> >>>>>NVDIMM ACPI binary code
> >>>>>
> >>>>>OSPM uses this port to tell QEMU the final address of the DSM memory
> >>>>>and notify QEMU to emulate the DSM method
> >>>>Would you need to pass control to QEMU if each NVDIMM had its whole
> >>>>label area MemoryRegion mapped right after its storage MemoryRegion?
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>No, label data is not mapped into guest's address space and it only
> >>>can be accessed by DSM method indirectly.
> >>Yep, per spec label data should be accessed via _DSM but question
> >>wasn't about it,
> 
> Ah, sorry, i missed your question.
> 
> >>Why would one map only 4Kb window and serialize label data
> >>via it if it could be mapped as whole, that way _DMS method will be
> >>much less complicated and there won't be need to add/support a protocol
> >>for its serialization.
> >>
> >
> >Is it ever accessed on data path? If not I prefer the current approach:
> 
> The label data is only accessed via two DSM commands - Get Namespace Label
> Data and Set Namespace Label Data, no other place need to be emulated.
> 
> >limit the window used, the serialization protocol seems rather simple.
> >
> 
> Yes.
> 
> Label data is at least 128k which is big enough for BIOS as it allocates
> memory at 0 ~ 4G which is tight region. It also needs guest OS to support
> lager max-xfer (the max size that can be transferred one time), the size
> in current Linux NVDIMM driver is 4k.
> 
> However, using lager DSM buffer can help us to simplify NVDIMM hotplug for
> the case that too many nvdimm devices present in the system and their FIT
> info can not be filled into one page. Each PMEM-only device needs 0xb8 bytes
> and we can append 256 memory devices at most, so 12 pages are needed to
> contain this info.

BTW 12 pages isn't too scary even for BIOS.

> The prototype we implemented is using ourself-defined
> protocol to read piece of _FIT and concatenate them before return to Guest,
> please refer to:
> https://github.com/xiaogr/qemu/commit/c46ce01c8433ac0870670304360b3c4aa414143a
> 
> As 12 pages are not small region for BIOS and the _FIT size may be extended in the
> future development (eg, if PBLK is introduced) i am not sure if we need this. Of
> course, another approach to simplify it is that we limit the number of NVDIMM
> device to make sure their _FIT < 4k.
> 
> 
> 