[virtio-dev] Re: [PATCH 06/11] introduction: Introduce transitional MMR interface

["Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>]

On Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 01:58:29AM +0300, Parav Pandit wrote:
> Introduce terminology for the transitional MMR device and transitional
> MMR driver.
> 
> Add description of the transitional MMR device. It is a PCI
> device that implements legacy virtio common configuration registers
> followed by legacy device specific registers in a memory region at
> an offset.
> 
> This enables hypervisor such as vfio driver to emulate
> I/O region towards the guest at BAR0. By doing so VFIO driver can
> translate read/write accesses on I/O region from the guest
> to the device memory region.
> 
> High level comparison of 1.x, transitional & transitional MMR
> sriov vf device:
> 
> +------------------+ +--------------------+ +--------------------+
> |virtio 1.x        | |Transitional        | |Transitional        |
> |SRIOV VF          | |SRIOV VF            | |MMR SRIOV VF        |
> |                  | |                    | |                    |
> ++---------------+ | ++---------------+   | ++---------------+   |
> ||dev_id =       | | ||dev_id =       |   | ||dev_id =       |   |
> ||{0x1040-0x106C}| | ||{0x1000-0x103f}|   | ||{0x10f9-0x10ff}|   |
> |+---------------+ | |+---------------+   | |+---------------+   |
> |                  | |                    | |                    |
> |+------------+    | |+------------+      | |+-----------------+ |
> ||Memory BAR  |    | ||Memory BAR  |      | ||Memory BAR       | |
> |+------------+    | |+------------+      | ||                 | |
> |                  | |                    | || +--------------+| |
> |                  | |+-----------------+ | || |legacy virtio || |
> |                  | ||IOBAR impossible | | || |+ dev cfg     || |
> |                  | |+-----------------+ | || |registers     || |
> |                  | |                    | || +--------------+| |
> |                  | |                    | |+-----------------+ |
> +------------------+ +--------------------+ +--------------------+
> 
> Motivation and background:
> PCIe and system limitations:
> 1. PCIe VFs do not support IOBAR cited at [1].
> 
> Perhaps the PCIe spec could be extended, however it would be only
> useful for virtio transitional devices. Even if such an extension
> is present, there are other system limitations described below in (2)
> and (3).
> 
> 2. cpu io port space limit and fragmentation
> x86_64 is limited to only 64K worth of IO port space at [2],
> which is shared with many other onboard system peripherals which
> are behind PCIe bridge; such I/O region also needs to be aligned
> to 4KB at PCIe bridge level cited at [3]. This can lead to a I/O space
> fragmentation. Due to this fragmentation and alignment need,
> actual usable range is small.
> 
> 3. IO space access of PCI device is done through non-posted message
>  which requires higher completion time in the PCIe fabric for
> round trip travel.
> 
> [1] PCIe spec citation:
> VFs do not support I/O Space and thus VF BARs shall not indicate I/O Space.
> 
> [2] cpu arch citiation:
> Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual
> The processor’s I/O address space is separate and distinct from
> the physical-memory address space. The I/O address space consists
> of 64K individually addressable 8-bit I/O ports, numbered 0 through FFFFH.
> 
> [3] PCIe spec citation:
> If a bridge implements an I/O address range,...I/O address range
> will be aligned to a 4 KB boundary.
> 
> Co-developed-by: Satananda Burla <sburla@marvell.com>
> Signed-off-by: Parav Pandit <parav@nvidia.com>
> ---
>  introduction.tex | 30 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 30 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/introduction.tex b/introduction.tex
> index e8b34e3..9a0f96a 100644
> --- a/introduction.tex
> +++ b/introduction.tex
> @@ -161,6 +161,20 @@ \subsection{Legacy Interface: Terminology}\label{intro:Legacy
>    have a need for backwards compatibility!
>  \end{note}
>  
> +\begin{description}
> +\item[Transitional MMR Device]
> +       is a PCI device which exposes legacy virtio configuration
> +       registers followed by legacy device configuration registers as
> +       memory mapped registers (MMR) at an offset in a memory region
> +       BAR, has no I/O region BAR,

in fact, most of existing pci interface can be in either IO or memory bar,
I don't think we specify that it's in a memory bar in the spec.
For example IIRC qemu has a flag that uses IO for signalling
kicks for modern VQs, this is slightly faster on some architectures.


> having its own PCI Device ID range,
> +       and follows the rest of the functionalities


this setence isn't grammatical.
not sure what exactly you are trying to say here, can not
help you rewrite.

> of the transitional device.

a transitional device probably.

> +\end{description}
> +
> +\begin{description}
> +\item[Transitional MMR Driver]
> +       is a PCI device driver that supports the Transitional MMR device.
> +\end{description}
> +
>  Devices or drivers with no legacy compatibility are referred to as
>  non-transitional devices and drivers, respectively.
>  
> @@ -174,6 +188,22 @@ \subsection{Transition from earlier specification drafts}\label{sec:Transition f
>  sections tagged "Legacy Interface" in the section title.
>  These highlight the changes made since the earlier drafts.
>  
> +\subsection{Transitional MMR interface: specification drafts}\label{sec:Transitional MMR interface: specification drafts}
> +
> +The transitional MMR device and driver differs from the
> +transitional device and driver respectively in few areas. Such

a few

> +differences are contained in sections named
> +'Transitional MMR interface', like this one. When no differences
> +are mentioned explicitly, the transitional MMR device and driver
> +follow exactly the same functionalities as that of the
> +transitional device and driver respectively.

Ugh, we called these transitional because they were there for
the transition period :)

The thing that I feel you miss here is that
transitional driver using transitional device MUST NOT
use the legacy interface.

The new thing with this MMR is that it's a memory mapped
access to legacy registers.


Going back to my idea of just adding legacy MMR capability to existing
modern and transitional devices, as opposed to a completely new type of
device, we would basically have a modern driver access the new
capability, and forward accesses from a legacy driver to there.
So "memory mapped legacy interface" would be a better name I think.




> +
> +\begin{note}
> +Transitional MMR interface is only required to support backward
> +compatibility. It should not be implemented unless there is a need
> +for the backward compatibility.
> +\end{note}
> +
>  \section{Structure Specifications}\label{sec:Structure Specifications}
>  
>  Many device and driver in-memory structure layouts are documented using
> -- 
> 2.26.2


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