Recently proposed vfio-pci kernel changes (v4.16) remove the
restriction preventing userspace from mmap'ing PCI BARs in areas
overlapping the MSI-X vector table. This change is primarily intended
to benefit host platforms which make use of system page sizes larger
than the PCI spec recommendation for alignment of MSI-X data
structures (ie. not x86_64). In the case of POWER systems, the SPAPR
spec requires the VM to program MSI-X using hypercalls, rendering the
MSI-X vector table unused in the VM view of the device. However,
ARM64 platforms also support 64KB pages and rely on QEMU emulation of
MSI-X. Regardless of the kernel driver allowing mmaps overlapping
the MSI-X vector table, emulation of the MSI-X vector table also
prevents direct mapping of device MMIO spaces overlapping this page.
Thanks to the fact that PCI devices have a standard self discovery
mechanism, we can try to resolve this by relocating the MSI-X data
structures, either by creating a new PCI BAR or extending an existing
BAR and updating the MSI-X capability for the new location. There's
even a very slim chance that this could benefit devices which do not
adhere to the PCI spec alignment guidelines on x86_64 systems.
This new x-msix-relocation option accepts the following choices:
off: Disable MSI-X relocation, use native device config (default)
auto: Use a known good combination for the platform/device (none yet)
bar0..bar5: Specify the target BAR for MSI-X data structures
If compatible, the target BAR will either be created or extended and
the new portion will be used for MSI-X emulation.
The first obvious user question with this option is how to determine
whether a given platform and device might benefit from this option.
In most cases, the answer is that it won't, especially on x86_64.
Devices often dedicate an entire BAR to MSI-X and therefore no
performance sensitive registers overlap the MSI-X area. Take for
example:
# lspci -vvvs 0a:00.0
0a:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection
...
Region 0: Memory at db680000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
Region 3: Memory at db7f8000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
...
Capabilities: [70] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=10 Masked-
Vector table: BAR=3 offset=00000000
PBA: BAR=3 offset=00002000
This device uses the 16K bar3 for MSI-X with the vector table at
offset zero and the pending bits arrary at offset 8K, fully honoring
the PCI spec alignment guidance. The data sheet specifically refers
to this as an MSI-X BAR. This device would not see a benefit from
MSI-X relocation regardless of the platform, regardless of the page
size.
However, here's another example:
# lspci -vvvs 02:00.0
02:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: xxxxxxxx
...
Region 0: I/O ports at c000 [size=256]
Region 1: Memory at ef640000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Region 3: Memory at ef600000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
...
Capabilities: [c0] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=16 Masked-
Vector table: BAR=1 offset=0000e000
PBA: BAR=1 offset=0000f000
Here the MSI-X data structures are placed on separate 4K pages at the
end of a 64KB BAR. If our host page size is 4K, we're likely fine,
but at 64KB page size, MSI-X emulation at that location prevents the
entire BAR from being directly mapped into the VM address space.
Overlapping performance sensitive registers then starts to be a very
likely scenario on such a platform. At this point, the user could
enable tracing on vfio_region_read and vfio_region_write to determine
more conclusively if device accesses are being trapped through QEMU.
Upon finding a device and platform in need of MSI-X relocation, the
next problem is how to choose target PCI BAR to host the MSI-X data
structures. A few key rules to keep in mind for this selection
include:
* There are only 6 BAR slots, bar0..bar5
* 64-bit BARs occupy two BAR slots, 'lspci -vvv' lists the first slot
* PCI BARs are always a power of 2 in size, extending == doubling
* The maximum size of a 32-bit BAR is 2GB
* MSI-X data structures must reside in an MMIO BAR
Using these rules, we can evaluate each BAR of the second example
device above as follows:
bar0: I/O port BAR, incompatible with MSI-X tables
bar1: BAR could be extended, incurring another 64KB of MMIO
bar2: Unavailable, bar1 is 64-bit, this register is used by bar1
bar3: BAR could be extended, incurring another 256KB of MMIO
bar4: Unavailable, bar3 is 64bit, this register is used by bar3
bar5: Available, empty BAR, minimum additional MMIO
A secondary optimization we might wish to make in relocating MSI-X
is to minimize the additional MMIO required for the device, therefore
we might test the available choices in order of preference as bar5,
bar1, and finally bar3. The original proposal for this feature
included an 'auto' option which would choose bar5 in this case, but
various drivers have been found that make assumptions about the
properties of the "first" BAR or the size of BARs such that there
appears to be no foolproof automatic selection available, requiring
known good combinations to be sourced from users. This patch is
pre-enabled for an 'auto' selection making use of a validated lookup
table, but no entries are yet identified.
Tested-by: Alexey Kardashevskiy <aik@ozlabs.ru>
Reviewed-by: Eric Auger <eric.auger@redhat.com>
Tested-by: Eric Auger <eric.auger@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>
89d5202edc