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1.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
2
3===========================================
4Shared Virtual Addressing (SVA) with ENQCMD
5===========================================
6
7Background
8==========
9
10Shared Virtual Addressing (SVA) allows the processor and device to use the
11same virtual addresses avoiding the need for software to translate virtual
12addresses to physical addresses. SVA is what PCIe calls Shared Virtual
13Memory (SVM).
14
15In addition to the convenience of using application virtual addresses
16by the device, it also doesn't require pinning pages for DMA.
17PCIe Address Translation Services (ATS) along with Page Request Interface
18(PRI) allow devices to function much the same way as the CPU handling
19application page-faults. For more information please refer to the PCIe
20specification Chapter 10: ATS Specification.
21
22Use of SVA requires IOMMU support in the platform. IOMMU is also
23required to support the PCIe features ATS and PRI. ATS allows devices
24to cache translations for virtual addresses. The IOMMU driver uses the
25mmu_notifier() support to keep the device TLB cache and the CPU cache in
26sync. When an ATS lookup fails for a virtual address, the device should
27use the PRI in order to request the virtual address to be paged into the
28CPU page tables. The device must use ATS again in order the fetch the
29translation before use.
30
31Shared Hardware Workqueues
32==========================
33
34Unlike Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), Scalable IOV (SIOV) permits
35the use of Shared Work Queues (SWQ) by both applications and Virtual
36Machines (VM's). This allows better hardware utilization vs. hard
37partitioning resources that could result in under utilization. In order to
38allow the hardware to distinguish the context for which work is being
39executed in the hardware by SWQ interface, SIOV uses Process Address Space
40ID (PASID), which is a 20-bit number defined by the PCIe SIG.
41
42PASID value is encoded in all transactions from the device. This allows the
43IOMMU to track I/O on a per-PASID granularity in addition to using the PCIe
44Resource Identifier (RID) which is the Bus/Device/Function.
45
46
47ENQCMD
48======
49
50ENQCMD is a new instruction on Intel platforms that atomically submits a
51work descriptor to a device. The descriptor includes the operation to be
52performed, virtual addresses of all parameters, virtual address of a completion
53record, and the PASID (process address space ID) of the current process.
54
55ENQCMD works with non-posted semantics and carries a status back if the
56command was accepted by hardware. This allows the submitter to know if the
57submission needs to be retried or other device specific mechanisms to
58implement fairness or ensure forward progress should be provided.
59
60ENQCMD is the glue that ensures applications can directly submit commands
61to the hardware and also permits hardware to be aware of application context
62to perform I/O operations via use of PASID.
63
64Process Address Space Tagging
65=============================
66
67A new thread-scoped MSR (IA32_PASID) provides the connection between
68user processes and the rest of the hardware. When an application first
69accesses an SVA-capable device, this MSR is initialized with a newly
70allocated PASID. The driver for the device calls an IOMMU-specific API
71that sets up the routing for DMA and page-requests.
72
73For example, the Intel Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA) uses
74iommu_sva_bind_device(), which will do the following:
75
76- Allocate the PASID, and program the process page-table (%cr3 register) in the
77  PASID context entries.
78- Register for mmu_notifier() to track any page-table invalidations to keep
79  the device TLB in sync. For example, when a page-table entry is invalidated,
80  the IOMMU propagates the invalidation to the device TLB. This will force any
81  future access by the device to this virtual address to participate in
82  ATS. If the IOMMU responds with proper response that a page is not
83  present, the device would request the page to be paged in via the PCIe PRI
84  protocol before performing I/O.
85
86This MSR is managed with the XSAVE feature set as "supervisor state" to
87ensure the MSR is updated during context switch.
88
89PASID Management
90================
91
92The kernel must allocate a PASID on behalf of each process which will use
93ENQCMD and program it into the new MSR to communicate the process identity to
94platform hardware.  ENQCMD uses the PASID stored in this MSR to tag requests
95from this process.  When a user submits a work descriptor to a device using the
96ENQCMD instruction, the PASID field in the descriptor is auto-filled with the
97value from MSR_IA32_PASID. Requests for DMA from the device are also tagged
98with the same PASID. The platform IOMMU uses the PASID in the transaction to
99perform address translation. The IOMMU APIs setup the corresponding PASID
100entry in IOMMU with the process address used by the CPU (e.g. %cr3 register in
101x86).
102
103The MSR must be configured on each logical CPU before any application
104thread can interact with a device. Threads that belong to the same
105process share the same page tables, thus the same MSR value.
106
107PASID is cleared when a process is created. The PASID allocation and MSR
108programming may occur long after a process and its threads have been created.
109One thread must call iommu_sva_bind_device() to allocate the PASID for the
110process. If a thread uses ENQCMD without the MSR first being populated, a #GP
111will be raised. The kernel will update the PASID MSR with the PASID for all
112threads in the process. A single process PASID can be used simultaneously
113with multiple devices since they all share the same address space.
114
115One thread can call iommu_sva_unbind_device() to free the allocated PASID.
116The kernel will clear the PASID MSR for all threads belonging to the process.
117
118New threads inherit the MSR value from the parent.
119
120Relationships
121=============
122
123 * Each process has many threads, but only one PASID.
124 * Devices have a limited number (~10's to 1000's) of hardware workqueues.
125   The device driver manages allocating hardware workqueues.
126 * A single mmap() maps a single hardware workqueue as a "portal" and
127   each portal maps down to a single workqueue.
128 * For each device with which a process interacts, there must be
129   one or more mmap()'d portals.
130 * Many threads within a process can share a single portal to access
131   a single device.
132 * Multiple processes can separately mmap() the same portal, in
133   which case they still share one device hardware workqueue.
134 * The single process-wide PASID is used by all threads to interact
135   with all devices.  There is not, for instance, a PASID for each
136   thread or each thread<->device pair.
137
138FAQ
139===
140
141* What is SVA/SVM?
142
143Shared Virtual Addressing (SVA) permits I/O hardware and the processor to
144work in the same address space, i.e., to share it. Some call it Shared
145Virtual Memory (SVM), but Linux community wanted to avoid confusing it with
146POSIX Shared Memory and Secure Virtual Machines which were terms already in
147circulation.
148
149* What is a PASID?
150
151A Process Address Space ID (PASID) is a PCIe-defined Transaction Layer Packet
152(TLP) prefix. A PASID is a 20-bit number allocated and managed by the OS.
153PASID is included in all transactions between the platform and the device.
154
155* How are shared workqueues different?
156
157Traditionally, in order for userspace applications to interact with hardware,
158there is a separate hardware instance required per process. For example,
159consider doorbells as a mechanism of informing hardware about work to process.
160Each doorbell is required to be spaced 4k (or page-size) apart for process
161isolation. This requires hardware to provision that space and reserve it in
162MMIO. This doesn't scale as the number of threads becomes quite large. The
163hardware also manages the queue depth for Shared Work Queues (SWQ), and
164consumers don't need to track queue depth. If there is no space to accept
165a command, the device will return an error indicating retry.
166
167A user should check Deferrable Memory Write (DMWr) capability on the device
168and only submits ENQCMD when the device supports it. In the new DMWr PCIe
169terminology, devices need to support DMWr completer capability. In addition,
170it requires all switch ports to support DMWr routing and must be enabled by
171the PCIe subsystem, much like how PCIe atomic operations are managed for
172instance.
173
174SWQ allows hardware to provision just a single address in the device. When
175used with ENQCMD to submit work, the device can distinguish the process
176submitting the work since it will include the PASID assigned to that
177process. This helps the device scale to a large number of processes.
178
179* Is this the same as a user space device driver?
180
181Communicating with the device via the shared workqueue is much simpler
182than a full blown user space driver. The kernel driver does all the
183initialization of the hardware. User space only needs to worry about
184submitting work and processing completions.
185
186* Is this the same as SR-IOV?
187
188Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) focuses on providing independent
189hardware interfaces for virtualizing hardware. Hence, it's required to be
190almost fully functional interface to software supporting the traditional
191BARs, space for interrupts via MSI-X, its own register layout.
192Virtual Functions (VFs) are assisted by the Physical Function (PF)
193driver.
194
195Scalable I/O Virtualization builds on the PASID concept to create device
196instances for virtualization. SIOV requires host software to assist in
197creating virtual devices; each virtual device is represented by a PASID
198along with the bus/device/function of the device.  This allows device
199hardware to optimize device resource creation and can grow dynamically on
200demand. SR-IOV creation and management is very static in nature. Consult
201references below for more details.
202
203* Why not just create a virtual function for each app?
204
205Creating PCIe SR-IOV type Virtual Functions (VF) is expensive. VFs require
206duplicated hardware for PCI config space and interrupts such as MSI-X.
207Resources such as interrupts have to be hard partitioned between VFs at
208creation time, and cannot scale dynamically on demand. The VFs are not
209completely independent from the Physical Function (PF). Most VFs require
210some communication and assistance from the PF driver. SIOV, in contrast,
211creates a software-defined device where all the configuration and control
212aspects are mediated via the slow path. The work submission and completion
213happen without any mediation.
214
215* Does this support virtualization?
216
217ENQCMD can be used from within a guest VM. In these cases, the VMM helps
218with setting up a translation table to translate from Guest PASID to Host
219PASID. Please consult the ENQCMD instruction set reference for more
220details.
221
222* Does memory need to be pinned?
223
224When devices support SVA along with platform hardware such as IOMMU
225supporting such devices, there is no need to pin memory for DMA purposes.
226Devices that support SVA also support other PCIe features that remove the
227pinning requirement for memory.
228
229Device TLB support - Device requests the IOMMU to lookup an address before
230use via Address Translation Service (ATS) requests.  If the mapping exists
231but there is no page allocated by the OS, IOMMU hardware returns that no
232mapping exists.
233
234Device requests the virtual address to be mapped via Page Request
235Interface (PRI). Once the OS has successfully completed the mapping, it
236returns the response back to the device. The device requests again for
237a translation and continues.
238
239IOMMU works with the OS in managing consistency of page-tables with the
240device. When removing pages, it interacts with the device to remove any
241device TLB entry that might have been cached before removing the mappings from
242the OS.
243
244References
245==========
246
247VT-D:
248https://01.org/blogs/ashokraj/2018/recent-enhancements-intel-virtualization-technology-directed-i/o-intel-vt-d
249
250SIOV:
251https://01.org/blogs/2019/assignable-interfaces-intel-scalable-i/o-virtualization-linux
252
253ENQCMD in ISE:
254https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/managed/c5/15/architecture-instruction-set-extensions-programming-reference.pdf
255
256DSA spec:
257https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/341204-intel-data-streaming-accelerator-spec.pdf
258