Re: [PATCH] dma-pool: use single atomic pool for both DMA zones

From: David Rientjes via iommu <iommu@lists.linux-foundation.org>
To: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, jeremy.linton@arm.com,
	iommu@lists.linux-foundation.org,
	linux-rpi-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
	Robin Murphy <robin.murphy@arm.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] dma-pool: use single atomic pool for both DMA zones
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2020 14:49:37 -0700 (PDT)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.23.453.2007091448550.972523@chino.kir.corp.google.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200708161010.GA30184@lst.de>

On Wed, 8 Jul 2020, Christoph Hellwig wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 08, 2020 at 06:00:35PM +0200, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> > On Wed, 2020-07-08 at 17:35 +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jul 07, 2020 at 02:28:04PM +0200, Nicolas Saenz Julienne wrote:
> > > > When allocating atomic DMA memory for a device, the dma-pool core
> > > > queries __dma_direct_optimal_gfp_mask() to check which atomic pool to
> > > > use. It turns out the GFP flag returned is only an optimistic guess.
> > > > The pool selected might sometimes live in a zone higher than the
> > > > device's view of memory.
> > > > 
> > > > As there isn't a way to grantee a mapping between a device's DMA
> > > > constraints and correct GFP flags this unifies both DMA atomic pools.
> > > > The resulting pool is allocated in the lower DMA zone available, if any,
> > > > so as for devices to always get accessible memory while having the
> > > > flexibility of using dma_pool_kernel for the non constrained ones.
> > > > 
> > > > Fixes: c84dc6e68a1d ("dma-pool: add additional coherent pools to map to gfp
> > > > mask")
> > > > Reported-by: Jeremy Linton <jeremy.linton@arm.com>
> > > > Suggested-by: Robin Murphy <robin.murphy@arm.com>
> > > > Signed-off-by: Nicolas Saenz Julienne <nsaenzjulienne@suse.de>
> > > 
> > > Hmm, this is not what I expected from the previous thread.  I thought
> > > we'd just use one dma pool based on runtime available of the zones..
> > 
> > I may be misunderstanding you, but isn't that going back to how things used to
> > be before pulling in David Rientjes' work? The benefit of having a GFP_KERNEL
> > pool is that non-address-constrained devices can get their atomic memory there,
> > instead of consuming somewhat scarcer low memory.
> 
> Yes, I think we are misunderstanding each other.  I don't want to remove
> any pool, just make better runtime decisions when to use them.
> 

Just to be extra explicit for the record and for my own understanding: 
Nicolas, your patch series "dma-pool: Fix atomic pool selection" obsoletes 
this patch, right? :)
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