Re: [PATCH v5 3/9] dma-mapping: add dma_{map,unmap}_resource

From: Niklas Söderlund
Date: Fri Mar 11 2016 - 07:59:08 EST


Hi all,

Thanks for your comments.

On 2016-03-11 03:15:22 -0800, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 10:47:10PM -0800, Dan Williams wrote:
> > I think it is confusing to use the dma_ prefix for this peer-to-peer
> > mmio functionality. dma_addr_t is a device's view of host memory.
> > Something like bus_addr_t bus_map_resource(). Doesn't this routine
> > also need the source device in addition to the target device? The
> > resource address is from the perspective of the host cpu, it may be a
> > different address space in the view of two devices relative to each
> > other.
>
> Is it supposed to be per-mmio? It's in dma-mapping ops, and has dma
> in the name, so I suspected it's for some form of peer dma. But given
> that our dma APIs reuqire a struct page backing I have no idea how this
> even supposed to work, and this little documentation blurb still doesn't
> clear that up.
>
> So for now I'd like to NAK this patch until the use case can be
> explained clearly, and actually works.

I can explain the use case and maybe we can figure out if this approach
is the correct one to solve it.

The problem is that I have devices behind an IOMMU which I would like to
use with DMA. Vinod recently moved forward with his and Linus Walleij
patch '[PATCH] dmaengine: use phys_addr_t for slave configuration' which
clarifies that the DMA slave address provided by a client is the
physical address. This puts the task of mapping the DMA slave address
from a phys_addr_t to a dma_addr_t on the DMA engine.

Without an IOMMU this is easy since the phys_addr_t and dma_addr_t are
the same and no special care is needed. However if you have a IOMMU you
need to map the DMA slave phys_addr_t to a dma_addr_t using something
like this. Is it not very similar to dma_map_single() where one maps
processor virtual memory (instead if MMIO) so that it can be used with
DMA slaves?

--
Regards,
Niklas Söderlund