Re: [Lsf-pc] [LSF/MM TOPIC] Un-addressable device memory and block/fs implications

["Aneesh Kumar K.V" <aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> writes:

> On Wed 14-12-16 12:15:14, Jerome Glisse wrote:
> <snipped explanation that the device has the same cabilities as CPUs wrt
> page handling>
>
>> > So won't it be easier to leave the pagecache page where it is and *copy* it
>> > to the device? Can the device notify us *before* it is going to modify a
>> > page, not just after it has modified it? Possibly if we just give it the
>> > page read-only and it will have to ask CPU to get write permission? If yes,
>> > then I belive this could work and even fs support should be doable.
>> 
>> Well yes and no. Device obey the same rule as CPU so if a file back page is
>> map read only in the process it must first do a write fault which will call
>> in the fs (page_mkwrite() of vm_ops). But once a page has write permission
>> there is no way to be notify by hardware on every write. First the hardware
>> do not have the capability. Second we are talking thousand (10 000 is upper
>> range in today device) of concurrent thread, each can possibly write to page
>> under consideration.
>
> Sure, I meant whether the device is able to do equivalent of ->page_mkwrite
> notification which apparently it is. OK.
>
>> We really want the device page to behave just like regular page. Most fs code
>> path never map file content, it only happens during read/write and i believe
>> this can be handled either by migrating back or by using bounce page. I want
>> to provide the choice between the two solutions as one will be better for some
>> workload and the other for different workload.
>
> I agree with keeping page used by the device behaving as similar as
> possible as any other page. I'm just exploring different possibilities how
> to make that happen. E.g. the scheme I was aiming at is:
>
> When you want page A to be used by the device, you set up page A' in the
> device but make sure any access to it will fault.
>
> When the device wants to access A', it notifies the CPU, that writeprotects
> all mappings of A, copy A to A' and map A' read-only for the device.


A and A' will have different pfns here and hence different struct page.
So what will be there in the address_space->page_tree ? If we place
A' in the page cache, then we are essentially bringing lot of locking
complexity Dave talked about in previous mails.

>
> When the device wants to write to A', it notifies CPU, that will clear all
> mappings of A and mark A as not-uptodate & dirty. When the CPU will then
> want to access the data in A again - we need to catch ->readpage,
> ->readpages, ->writepage, ->writepages - it will writeprotect A' in
> the device, copy data to A, mark A as uptodate & dirty, and off we go.
>
> When we want to write to the page on CPU - we get either wp fault if it was
> via mmap, or we have to catch that in places using kmap() - we just remove
> access to A' from the device.
>
> This scheme makes the device mapping functionality transparent to the
> filesystem (you actually don't need to hook directly into ->readpage etc.
> handlers, you can just have wrappers around them for this functionality)
> and fairly straightforward... It is so transparent that even direct IO works
> with this since the page cache invalidation pass we do before actually doing
> the direct IO will make sure to pull all the pages from the device and write
> them to disk if needed. What do you think?
>

-aneesh

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