[dpdk-dev] [RFC PATCH] dmadev: introduce DMA device library

[Jerin Jacob]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2021 at 9:00 AM fengchengwen <fengchengwen at huawei.com> wrote:
>

> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> The above will give better performance and is the best trade-off c
> >>>>> between performance and per transfer variables.
> >>>>
> >>>> We may need to have different APIs for context-aware and context-unaware
> >>>> processing, with which to use determined by the capabilities discovery.
> >>>> Given that for these DMA devices the offload cost is critical, more so than
> >>>> any other dev class I've looked at before, I'd like to avoid having APIs
> >>>> with extra parameters than need to be passed about since that just adds
> >>>> extra CPU cycles to the offload.
> >>>
> >>> If driver does not support additional attributes and/or the
> >>> application does not need it, rte_dmadev_desc_t can be NULL.
> >>> So that it won't have any cost in the datapath. I think, we can go to
> >>> different API
> >>> cases if we can not abstract problems without performance impact.
> >>> Otherwise, it will be too much
> >>> pain for applications.
> >>
> >> Yes, currently we plan to use different API for different case, e.g.
> >>   rte_dmadev_memcpy()  -- deal with local to local memcopy
> >>   rte_dmadev_memset()  -- deal with fill with local memory with pattern
> >> maybe:
> >>   rte_dmadev_imm_data()  --deal with copy very little data
> >>   rte_dmadev_p2pcopy()   --deal with peer-to-peer copy of diffenet PCIE addr
> >>
> >> These API capabilities will be reflected in the device capability set so that
> >> application could know by standard API.
> >
> >
> > There will be a lot of combination of that it will be like M x N cross
> > base case, It won't scale.
>
> Currently, it is hard to define generic dma descriptor, I think the well-defined
> APIs is feasible.

I would like to understand why not feasible? if we move the
preparation to the slow path.

i.e

struct rte_dmadev_desc defines all the "attributes" of all DMA devices available
using capability. I believe with the scheme, we can scale and
incorporate all features of
all DMA HW without any performance impact.

something like:

struct rte_dmadev_desc {
  /* Attributes all DMA transfer available for all HW under capability. */
  channel or port;
  ops ; // copy, fill etc..
 /* impemention opqueue memory as zero length array,
rte_dmadev_desc_prep() update this memory with HW specific information
*/
  uint8_t impl_opq[];
}

// allocate the memory for dma decriptor
struct rte_dmadev_desc *rte_dmadev_desc_alloc(devid);
// Convert DPDK specific descriptors to HW specific descriptors in slowpath */
rte_dmadev_desc_prep(devid, struct rte_dmadev_desc *desc);
// Free dma descriptor memory
rte_dmadev_desc_free(devid, struct rte_dmadev_desc *desc )

The above calls in slow path.

Only below call in fastpath.
// Here desc can be NULL(in case you don't need any specific attribute
attached to transfer, if needed, it can be an object which is gone
through rte_dmadev_desc_prep())
rte_dmadev_enq(devid, struct rte_dmadev_desc *desc, void *src, void
*dest, unsigned int len, cookie)

>
> >
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Just to understand, I think, we need to HW capabilities and how to
> >>> have a common API.
> >>> I assume HW will have some HW JOB descriptors which will be filled in
> >>> SW and submitted to HW.
> >>> In our HW,  Job descriptor has the following main elements
> >>>
> >>> - Channel   // We don't expect the application to change per transfer
> >>> - Source address - It can be scatter-gather too - Will be changed per transfer
> >>> - Destination address - It can be scatter-gather too - Will be changed
> >>> per transfer
> >>> - Transfer Length - - It can be scatter-gather too - Will be changed
> >>> per transfer
> >>> - IOVA address where HW post Job completion status PER Job descriptor
> >>> - Will be changed per transfer
> >>> - Another sideband information related to channel  // We don't expect
> >>> the application to change per transfer
> >>> - As an option, Job completion can be posted as an event to
> >>> rte_event_queue  too // We don't expect the application to change per
> >>> transfer
> >>
> >> The 'option' field looks like a software interface field, but not HW descriptor.
> >
> > It is in HW descriptor.
>
> The HW is interesting, something like: DMA could send completion direct to EventHWQueue,
> the DMA and EventHWQueue are link in the hardware range, rather than by software.

Yes.

>
> Could you provide public driver of this HW ? So we could know more about it's working
> mechanism and software-hardware collaboration.

http://code.dpdk.org/dpdk/v21.05/source/drivers/raw/octeontx2_dma/otx2_dpi_rawdev.h#L149
is the DMA instruction header.