Re: [PATCH v3 1/6] kvm: determine memory type from VMA

[Jason Gunthorpe]

On Sun, Jul 16, 2023 at 08:09:02AM -0700, Catalin Marinas wrote:

> In terms of security for arm64 at least, Device vs Normal NC (or nc vs
> wc in Linux terminology) doesn't make much difference with the former
> occasionally being worse. The kernel would probably trust the DPDK code
> if it allows direct device access.

RDMA and DRM already allow device drivers to map WC to userspace on
demand, we expect the platform to support this.

> > So the userspace component needs to be responsible for selecting the
> > mapping, the same way using the PCI sysfs resource files today allows
> > to do that by selecting the _wc variant.
> 
> I guess the sysfs interface is just trying to work around the VFIO
> limitations.

I think just nobody has ever asked for VFIO WC support. The main
non-VM user is DPDK and none of the NIC drivers have wanted this (DPDK
applications areis more of throughput than latency focused typically)

> > This is particularly suited for the case (which used to exist, I don't
> > know if it still does) where the buffer that wants write combining
> > reside in the same BAR as registers that otherwise don't.
> 
> IIUC that's still the case for some devices (I think Jason mentioned
> some Mellanox cards).

Right, VFIO will have to allow it page-by-page

> I think this interface would help KVM when we'll need a cacheable
> mapping. For WC, we are ok without any VFIO changes.

Yes, it may be interesting to map cachable CXL memory as NORMAL_NC
into userspace for similar reasons.

Jason