Re: [virtio-dev] Re: [PATCH v11 6/6] virtio-balloon: VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_CMD_VQ

From: Michael S. Tsirkin
Date: Wed Jun 21 2017 - 08:29:15 EST


On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 11:28:00AM +0800, Wei Wang wrote:
> On 06/21/2017 12:18 AM, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 09, 2017 at 06:41:41PM +0800, Wei Wang wrote:
> > > - if (!virtqueue_indirect_desc_table_add(vq, desc, num)) {
> > > + if (!virtqueue_indirect_desc_table_add(vq, desc, *num)) {
> > > virtqueue_kick(vq);
> > > - wait_event(vb->acked, virtqueue_get_buf(vq, &len));
> > > - vb->balloon_page_chunk.chunk_num = 0;
> > > + if (busy_wait)
> > > + while (!virtqueue_get_buf(vq, &len) &&
> > > + !virtqueue_is_broken(vq))
> > > + cpu_relax();
> > > + else
> > > + wait_event(vb->acked, virtqueue_get_buf(vq, &len));
> >
> > This is something I didn't previously notice.
> > As you always keep a single buffer in flight, you do not
> > really need indirect at all. Just add all descriptors
> > in the ring directly, then kick.
> >
> > E.g.
> > virtqueue_add_first
> > virtqueue_add_next
> > virtqueue_add_last
> >
> > ?
> >
> > You also want a flag to avoid allocations but there's no need to do it
> > per descriptor, set it on vq.
> >
>
> Without using the indirect table, I'm thinking about changing to use
> the standard sg (i.e. struct scatterlist), instead of vring_desc, so that
> we don't need to modify or add any new functions of virtqueue_add().
>
> In this case, we will kmalloc an array of sgs in probe(), and we can add
> the sgs one by one to the vq, which won't trigger the allocation of an
> indirect table inside virtqueue_add(), and then kick when all are added.
>
> Best,
> Wei

And allocate headers too? This can work. API extensions aren't
necessarily a bad idea though. The API I suggest above is preferable
for the simple reason that it can work without INDIRECT flag
support in hypervisor.

I wonder which APIs would Nitesh find useful.

--
MST