Re: [PATCH v7 0/6] Proposal for a GPU cgroup controller

[Daniel Vetter <daniel@ffwll.ch>]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2022 at 10:31:21AM -0700, T.J. Mercier wrote:
> On Fri, May 20, 2022 at 9:25 AM T.J. Mercier <tjmercier@google.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, May 20, 2022 at 12:47 AM Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > On Tue, May 17, 2022 at 04:30:29PM -0700, T.J. Mercier wrote:
> > > > Thanks for your suggestion. This almost works. "dmabuf" as a key could
> > > > work, but I'd actually like to account for each heap. Since heaps can
> > > > be dynamically added, I can't accommodate every potential heap name by
> > > > hardcoding registrations in the misc controller.
> > >
> > > On its own, that's a pretty weak reason to be adding a separate gpu
> > > controller especially given that it doesn't really seem to be one with
> > > proper abstractions for gpu resources. We don't want to keep adding random
> > > keys to misc controller but can definitely add limited flexibility. What
> > > kind of keys do you need?
> > >
> > Well the dmabuf-from-heaps component of this is the initial use case.
> > I was envisioning we'd have additional keys as discussed here:
> > https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20220328035951.1817417-1-tjmercier@google.com/T/#m82e5fe9d8674bb60160701e52dae4356fea2ddfa
> > So we'd end up with a well-defined core set of keys like "system", and
> > then drivers would be free to use their own keys for their own unique
> > purposes which could be complementary or orthogonal to the core set.
> > Yesterday I was talking with someone who is interested in limiting gpu
> > cores and bus IDs in addition to gpu memory. How to define core keys
> > is the part where it looks like there's trouble.
> >
> > For my use case it would be sufficient to have current and maximum
> > values for an arbitrary number of keys - one per heap. So the only
> > part missing from the misc controller (for my use case) is the ability
> > to register a new key at runtime as heaps are added. Instead of
> > keeping track of resources with enum misc_res_type, requesting a
> > resource handle/ID from the misc controller at runtime is what I think
> > would be required instead.
> >
> Quick update: I'm going to make an attempt to modify the misc
> controller to support a limited amount of dynamic resource
> registration/tracking in place of the new controller in this series.
> 
> Thanks everyone for the feedback.

Somehow I missed this entire chain here.

I'm not a fan, because I'm kinda hoping we could finally unify gpu memory
account. Atm everyone just adds their one-off solution in a random corner:
- total tracking in misc cgroup controller
- dma-buf sysfs files (except apparently too slow so it'll get deleted
  again)
- random other stuff on open device files os OOM killer can see it

This doesn't look good.
-Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
http://blog.ffwll.ch