Re: [PATCH v2] fpga: dfl: afu: support Rev 2 of DFL Port feature

From: matthew . gerlach
Date: Fri Mar 01 2024 - 15:40:26 EST




[snip]


Hi Yilun,

I think this conversation has gotten a little off track. This patch only
changes the port reset behavior at driver initialization for revision 2 of
the port IP. The behavior and the requirements of port reset during run time
have not changed. The existing implementation requires the user performing
the port reset to ensure appropriate SW was quiesced. This patch does not
change this requirement.

You are actually adding support to the new devices behavior defined by
revision 2. Previously the user requires the management PF driver to do port
reset, and this only affects some logic in the PF itself and the impact could
be handled inside the driver. The current PF driver doesn't actually do anything
because it (or any kernel component) never touches the disabled logic, and the
user accessing of the mmapped but disabled logic won't cause system issues.

I'm wondering about the use case when Virtual Functions (VFs) are enabled with the current driver. If partial reconfiguration of the port occurs, which includes a reset, what happens to the user software attached to the VFs when the hardware has changed out from under it? While the current port implementation won't cause PCIe errors when the logic is disable, something has to notify the user software that the hardware changed. I think the user space software would be typically notified of the change by the orchestration software performing the partial reconfiguration. I think the use case of VFs with the original port implementation is logically equivalent to the new port implementation with multiple PFs/VFs.


But the new management PF does port reset and affect other PFs, and may
cause disorder in other drivers. so you need extra code to support the
behavior.

I think the real problem is that the new port is not doing as good of a job preventing PCIe errors during port reset as the previous version.

Matthew

This patch does make some progress, as you said, "With revision 2,the
initial state of the logic inside the port is guaranteed to be valid, and
a port reset is not required during driver initialization". But it
should not be the only patch to enable the new port reset behavior.





image. I don't think the driver performing the port_reset() can know all the

Other PF drivers should know their own components. They should be aware
that their devices are being reset.

The other PF drivers depend on the actual FPGA image being run.


components to be able to provide any meaningful management.

If the reset provider and reset consumer are not in the same driver,
they should interact with each other. IIRC, some reset controller class
works for this purpose.

The other PFs in many cases can present as standard devices with existing
drivers like virtio-net or virtio-blk. It does not seem desireable to have
to change existing drivers for a particular FPGA implementation

If you have to use a specific method for reset, it is not a standard virtio
pci device, and you have to make some change.

From the perspective of the PCI PF/VF implementing the virtio or other
standard device, the pci endpoint is completely compliant to the standard,
and no driver changes should be required. As mentioned above, this patch
does nothing to change any of this behavior. Consider a port reset that is
part of a partial configuration flow. The virtio endpoint can become
something completely different with a completely different driver. This

Then how could the virtio driver stop and remove itself to avoid crashing the
kernel, and how could the new driver be probed. If the answer is still
userspace responsible for everything, that's not good to me.

Thanks,
Yilun

patch does not affect this flow either.

Thanks,
Matthew


Thanks,
Yilun


Thanks,
Matthew

Thanks,
Yilun


Thanks,
Matthew


Thanks,
Yilun


Do you want me to update the commit message with this information?

Thanks,
Matthew