Re: [PATCH v3 4/7] swiotlb: if swiotlb is full, fall back to a transient memory pool

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

On Thu, Jul 06, 2023 at 03:50:55AM +0000, Michael Kelley (LINUX) wrote:
> From: Petr Tesarik <petrtesarik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2023 2:54 AM
> > 
> > Try to allocate a transient memory pool if no suitable slots can be found,
> > except when allocating from a restricted pool. The transient pool is just
> > enough big for this one bounce buffer. It is inserted into a per-device
> > list of transient memory pools, and it is freed again when the bounce
> > buffer is unmapped.
> > 
> > Transient memory pools are kept in an RCU list. A memory barrier is
> > required after adding a new entry, because any address within a transient
> > buffer must be immediately recognized as belonging to the SWIOTLB, even if
> > it is passed to another CPU.
> > 
> > Deletion does not require any synchronization beyond RCU ordering
> > guarantees. After a buffer is unmapped, its physical addresses may no
> > longer be passed to the DMA API, so the memory range of the corresponding
> > stale entry in the RCU list never matches. If the memory range gets
> > allocated again, then it happens only after a RCU quiescent state.
> > 
> > Since bounce buffers can now be allocated from different pools, add a
> > parameter to swiotlb_alloc_pool() to let the caller know which memory pool
> > is used. Add swiotlb_find_pool() to find the memory pool corresponding to
> > an address. This function is now also used by is_swiotlb_buffer(), because
> > a simple boundary check is no longer sufficient.
> > 
> > The logic in swiotlb_alloc_tlb() is taken from __dma_direct_alloc_pages(),
> > simplified and enhanced to use coherent memory pools if needed.
> > 
> > Note that this is not the most efficient way to provide a bounce buffer,
> > but when a DMA buffer can't be mapped, something may (and will) actually
> > break. At that point it is better to make an allocation, even if it may be
> > an expensive operation.
> 
> I continue to think about swiotlb memory management from the standpoint
> of CoCo VMs that may be quite large with high network and storage loads.
> These VMs are often running mission-critical workloads that can't tolerate
> a bounce buffer allocation failure.  To prevent such failures, the swiotlb
> memory size must be overly large, which wastes memory.

If "mission critical workloads" are in a vm that allowes overcommit and
no control over other vms in that same system, then you have worse
problems, sorry.

Just don't do that.

thanks,

greg k-h