@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ The Linux PCI driver implementer's API guide
:maxdepth: 2
pci
+ p2pdma
.. only:: subproject and html
new file mode 100644
@@ -0,0 +1,145 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+============================
+PCI Peer-to-Peer DMA Support
+============================
+
+The PCI bus has pretty decent support for performing DMA transfers
+between two devices on the bus. This type of transaction is henceforth
+called Peer-to-Peer (or P2P). However, there are a number of issues that
+make P2P transactions tricky to do in a perfectly safe way.
+
+One of the biggest issues is that PCI doesn't require forwarding
+transactions between hierarchy domains, and in PCIe, each Root Port
+defines a separate hierarchy domain. To make things worse, there is no
+simple way to determine if a given Root Complex supports this or not.
+(See PCIe r4.0, sec 1.3.1). Therefore, as of this writing, the kernel
+only supports doing P2P when the endpoints involved are all behind the
+same PCI bridge, as such devices are all in the same PCI hierarchy
+domain, and the spec guarantees that all transactions within the
+hierarchy will be routable, but it does not require routing
+between hierarchies.
+
+The second issue is that to make use of existing interfaces in Linux,
+memory that is used for P2P transactions needs to be backed by struct
+pages. However, PCI BARs are not typically cache coherent so there are
+a few corner case gotchas with these pages so developers need to
+be careful about what they do with them.
+
+
+Driver Writer's Guide
+=====================
+
+In a given P2P implementation there may be three or more different
+types of kernel drivers in play:
+
+* Provider - A driver which provides or publishes P2P resources like
+ memory or doorbell registers to other drivers.
+* Client - A driver which makes use of a resource by setting up a
+ DMA transaction to or from it.
+* Orchestrator - A driver which orchestrates the flow of data between
+ clients and providers.
+
+In many cases there could be overlap between these three types (i.e.,
+it may be typical for a driver to be both a provider and a client).
+
+For example, in the NVMe Target Copy Offload implementation:
+
+* The NVMe PCI driver is both a client, provider and orchestrator
+ in that it exposes any CMB (Controller Memory Buffer) as a P2P memory
+ resource (provider), it accepts P2P memory pages as buffers in requests
+ to be used directly (client) and it can also make use of the CMB as
+ submission queue entries (orchastrator).
+* The RDMA driver is a client in this arrangement so that an RNIC
+ can DMA directly to the memory exposed by the NVMe device.
+* The NVMe Target driver (nvmet) can orchestrate the data from the RNIC
+ to the P2P memory (CMB) and then to the NVMe device (and vice versa).
+
+This is currently the only arrangement supported by the kernel but
+one could imagine slight tweaks to this that would allow for the same
+functionality. For example, if a specific RNIC added a BAR with some
+memory behind it, its driver could add support as a P2P provider and
+then the NVMe Target could use the RNIC's memory instead of the CMB
+in cases where the NVMe cards in use do not have CMB support.
+
+
+Provider Drivers
+----------------
+
+A provider simply needs to register a BAR (or a portion of a BAR)
+as a P2P DMA resource using :c:func:`pci_p2pdma_add_resource()`.
+This will register struct pages for all the specified memory.
+
+After that it may optionally publish all of its resources as
+P2P memory using :c:func:`pci_p2pmem_publish()`. This will allow
+any orchestrator drivers to find and use the memory. When marked in
+this way, the resource must be regular memory with no side effects.
+
+For the time being this is fairly rudimentary in that all resources
+are typically going to be P2P memory. Future work will likely expand
+this to include other types of resources like doorbells.
+
+
+Client Drivers
+--------------
+
+A client driver typically only has to conditionally change its DMA map
+routine to use the mapping function :c:func:`pci_p2pdma_map_sg()` instead
+of the usual :c:func:`dma_map_sg()` function. Memory mapped in this
+way does not need to be unmapped.
+
+The client may also, optionally, make use of
+:c:func:`is_pci_p2pdma_page()` to determine when to use the P2P mapping
+functions and when to use the regular mapping functions. In some
+situations, it may be more appropriate to use a flag to indicate a
+given request is P2P memory and map appropriately. It is important to
+ensure that struct pages that back P2P memory stay out of code that
+does not have support for them as other code may treat the pages as
+regular memory which may not be appropriate.
+
+
+Orchestrator Drivers
+--------------------
+
+The first task an orchestrator driver must do is compile a list of
+all client devices that will be involved in a given transaction. For
+example, the NVMe Target driver creates a list including the namespace
+block device and the RNIC in use. If the orchestrator has access to
+a specific P2P provider to use it may check compatibility using
+:c:func:`pci_p2pdma_distance()` otherwise it may find a memory provider
+that's compatible with all clients using :c:func:`pci_p2pmem_find()`.
+If more than one provider is supported, the one nearest to all the clients will
+be chosen first. If more than one provider is an equal distance away, the
+one returned will be chosen at random (it is not an arbitrary but
+truely random). This function returns the PCI device to use for the provider
+with a reference taken and therefore when it's no longer needed it should be
+returned with pci_dev_put().
+
+Once a provider is selected, the orchestrator can then use
+:c:func:`pci_alloc_p2pmem()` and :c:func:`pci_free_p2pmem()` to
+allocate P2P memory from the provider. :c:func:`pci_p2pmem_alloc_sgl()`
+and :c:func:`pci_p2pmem_free_sgl()` are convenience functions for
+allocating scatter-gather lists with P2P memory.
+
+Struct Page Caveats
+-------------------
+
+Driver writers should be very careful about not passing these special
+struct pages to code that isn't prepared for it. At this time, the kernel
+interfaces do not have any checks for ensuring this. This obviously
+precludes passing these pages to userspace.
+
+P2P memory is also technically IO memory but should never have any side
+effects behind it. Thus, the order of loads and stores should not be important
+and ioreadX(), iowriteX() and friends should not be necessary.
+However, as the memory is not cache coherent, if access ever needs to
+be protected by a spinlock then :c:func:`mmiowb()` must be used before
+unlocking the lock. (See ACQUIRES VS I/O ACCESSES in
+Documentation/memory-barriers.txt)
+
+
+P2P DMA Support Library
+=====================
+
+.. kernel-doc:: drivers/pci/p2pdma.c
+ :export: