Re: [RFC][PATCH 0/5 v2] DMA-BUF Heaps (destaging ION)

From: Rob Clark
Date: Tue Mar 19 2019 - 17:58:58 EST


On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 1:00 PM Andrew F. Davis <afd@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 3/19/19 11:54 AM, Benjamin Gaignard wrote:
> > Le mer. 13 mars 2019 Ã 23:31, John Stultz <john.stultz@xxxxxxxxxx> a Ãcrit :
> >>
> >> On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 1:11 PM Liam Mark <lmark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>> On Tue, 5 Mar 2019, John Stultz wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Eventual TODOS:
> >>>> * Reimplement page-pool for system heap (working on this)
> >>>> * Add stats accounting to system/cma heaps
> >>>> * Make the kselftest actually useful
> >>>> * Add other heaps folks see as useful (would love to get
> >>>> some help from actual carveout/chunk users)!
> >>>
> >>> We use a modified carveout heap for certain secure use cases.
> >>
> >> Cool! It would be great to see if you have any concerns about adding
> >> such a secure-carveout heap to this framework. I suspect it would be
> >> fairly similar to how its integrated into ION, but particularly I'd be
> >> interested in issues around the lack of private flags and other
> >> allocation arguments like alignment.
> >>
> >>> Although there would probably be some benefit in discssing how the dma-buf
> >>> heap framework may want to support
> >>> secure heaps in the future it is a large topic which I assume you don't
> >>> want to tackle now.
> >>
> >> So I suspect others (Benjamin?) would have a more informed opinion on
> >> the details, but the intent is to allow secure heap implementations.
> >> I'm not sure what areas of concern you have for this allocation
> >> framework in particular?
> >
> > yes I would be great to understand how you provide the information to
> > tell that a dmabuf
> > is secure (or not) since we can't add flag in dmabuf structure itself.
> > An option is manage
> > the access rights when a device attach itself to the dmabuf but in
> > this case you need define
> > a list of allowed devices per heap...
> > If you have a good solution for secure heaps you are welcome :-)
> >
>
> Do we really need any of that? A secure buffer is secured by the
> hardware firewalls that keep out certain IP (including often the
> processor running Linux). So the only thing we need to track internally
> is that we should not allow mmap/kmap on the buffer. That can be done in
> the per-heap layer, everything else stays the same as a standard
> carveout heap.

For at least some hw the importing driver needs to configure things
differently for secure buffers :-/

BR,
-R

>
> Andrew
>
> > Benjamin
> >>
> >>> We don't have any non-secure carveout heap use cases but the client use
> >>> case I have seen usually revolve around
> >>> wanting large allocations to succeed very quickly.
> >>> For example I have seen camera use cases which do very large allocations
> >>> on camera bootup from the carveout heap, these allocations would come from
> >>> the carveout heap and fallback to the system heap when the carveout heap
> >>> was full.
> >>> Actual non-secure carveout heap can perhaps provide more detail.
> >>
> >> Yea, I'm aware that folks still see carveout as preferable to CMA due
> >> to more consistent/predictable allocation latency. I think we still
> >> have the issue that we don't have bindings to establish/configure
> >> carveout regions w/ dts, and I'm not really wanting to hold up the
> >> allocation API on that issue.
> >>
> >>
> >>> Since we are making some fundamental changes to how ION worked and since
> >>> Android is likely also be the largest user of the dma-buf heaps framework
> >>> I think it would be good
> >>> to have a path to resolve the issues which are currently preventing
> >>> commercial Android releases from moving to the upstream version of ION.
> >>
> >> Yea, I do see solving the cache management efficiency issues as
> >> critical for the dmabuf heaps to be actually usable (my previous
> >> version of this patchset accidentally had my hacks to improve
> >> performance rolled in!). And there are discussions going on in
> >> various channels to try to figure out how to either change Android to
> >> use dma-bufs more in line with how upstream expects, or what more
> >> generic dma-buf changes we may need to allow Android to use dmabufs
> >> with the expected performance they need.
> >>
> >>> I can understand if you don't necessarily want to put all/any of these
> >>> changes into the dma-buf heaps framework as part of this series, but my
> >>> hope is we can get
> >>> the upstream community and the Android framework team to agree on what
> >>> upstreamable changes to dma-buf heaps framework, and/or the Android
> >>> framework, would be required in order for Android to move to the upstream
> >>> dma-buf heaps framework for commercial devices.
> >>
> >> Yes. Though I also don't want to get the bigger dma-buf usage
> >> discussion (which really affects all dmabuf exporters) too tied up
> >> with this patch sets attempt to provide a usable allocation interface.
> >> Part of the problem that I think we've seen with ION is that there is
> >> a nest of of related issues, and the entire thing is just too big to
> >> address at once, which I think is part of why ION has sat in staging
> >> for so long. This patchset just tries to provide an dmabuf allocation
> >> interface, and a few example exporter heap types.
> >>
> >>> I don't mean to make this specific to Android, but my assumption is that
> >>> many of the ION/dma-buf heaps issues which affect Android would likely
> >>> affect other new large users of the dma-buf heaps framework, so if we
> >>> resolve it for Android we would be helping these future users as well.
> >>> And I do understand that some the issues facing Android may need to be
> >>> resolved by making changes to Android framework.
> >>
> >> While true, I also think some of the assumptions in how the dma-bufs
> >> are used (pre-attachment of all devices, etc) are maybe not so
> >> realistic given how Android is using them. I do want to explore if
> >> Android can change how they use dma-bufs, but I also worry that we
> >> need to think about how we could loosen the expectations for dma-bufs,
> >> as well as trying to figure out how to support things folks have
> >> brought up like partial cache maintenance.
> >>
> >>> I think it would be helpful to try and get as much of this agreed upon as
> >>> possible before the dma-buf heaps framework moves out of staging.
> >>>
> >>> As part of my review I will highlight some of the issues which would
> >>> affect Android.
> >>> In my comments I will apply them to the system heap since that is what
> >>> Android currently uses for a lot of its use cases.
> >>> I realize that this new framework provides more flexibility to heaps, so
> >>> perhaps some of these issues can be solved by creating a new type of
> >>> system heap which Android can use, but even if the solution involves
> >>> creating a new system heap I would like to make sure that this "new"
> >>> system heap is upstreamable.
> >>
> >> So yea, I do realize I'm dodging the hard problem here, but I think
> >> the cache-management/usage issue is far more generic.
> >>
> >> You're right that this implementation give a lot of flexibility to the
> >> exporter heaps in how they implement the dmabuf ops (just like how
> >> other device drivers that are dmabuf exporters have the same
> >> flexibility), but I very much agree we don't want to add a system and
> >> then later a "system-android" heap. So yea, a reasonable amount of
> >> caution is warranted here.
> >>
> >> Thanks so much for the review and feedback! I'll try to address things
> >> as I can as I'm traveling this week (so I may be a bit spotty).
> >>
> >> thanks
> >> -john
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