Re: [RFC PATCH 02/14] mm/hms: heterogenenous memory system (HMS) documentation

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, Dec 4, 2018 at 10:24 AM Jerome Glisse <jglisse@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Dec 04, 2018 at 09:06:59AM -0800, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > jglisse@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
> >
> > > +
> > > +To help with forward compatibility each object as a version value and
> > > +it is mandatory for user space to only use target or initiator with
> > > +version supported by the user space. For instance if user space only
> > > +knows about what version 1 means and sees a target with version 2 then
> > > +the user space must ignore that target as if it does not exist.
> >
> > So once v2 is introduced all applications that only support v1 break.
> >
> > That seems very un-Linux and will break Linus' "do not break existing
> > applications" rule.
> >
> > The standard approach that if you add something incompatible is to
> > add new field, but keep the old ones.
>
> No that's not how it is suppose to work. So let says it is 2018 and you
> have v1 memory (like your regular main DDR memory for instance) then it
> will always be expose a v1 memory.
>
> Fast forward 2020 and you have this new type of memory that is not cache
> coherent and you want to expose this to userspace through HMS. What you
> do is a kernel patch that introduce the v2 type for target and define a
> set of new sysfs file to describe what v2 is. On this new computer you
> report your usual main memory as v1 and your new memory as v2.
>
> So the application that only knew about v1 will keep using any v1 memory
> on your new platform but it will not use any of the new memory v2 which
> is what you want to happen. You do not have to break existing application
> while allowing to add new type of memory.

That sounds needlessly restrictive. Let the kernel arbitrate what
memory an application gets, don't design a system where applications
are hard coded to a memory type. Applications can hint, or optionally
specify an override and the kernel can react accordingly.