[PATCH 1/3] wifi: ath11k: fix dest ring-buffer corruption
Miaoqing Pan
quic_miaoqing at quicinc.com
Tue Jun 3 22:32:08 PDT 2025
On 6/4/2025 10:34 AM, Miaoqing Pan wrote:
>
>
> On 6/3/2025 7:51 PM, Johan Hovold wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 03, 2025 at 06:52:37PM +0800, Baochen Qiang wrote:
>>> On 6/2/2025 4:03 PM, Johan Hovold wrote:
>>
>>>> No, the barrier is needed between reading the head pointer and
>>>> accessing
>>>> descriptor fields, that's what matters.
>>>>
>>>> You can still end up with reading stale descriptor data even when
>>>> ath11k_hal_srng_dst_get_next_entry() returns non-NULL due to
>>>> speculation
>>>> (that's what happens on the X13s).
>>>
>>> The fact is that a dma_rmb() does not even prevent speculation, no
>>> matter where it is
>>> placed, right?
>>
>> It prevents the speculated load from being used.
>>
>>> If so the whole point of dma_rmb() is to prevent from compiler
>>> reordering
>>> or CPU reordering, but is it really possible?
>>>
>>> The sequence is
>>>
>>> 1# reading HP
>>> srng->u.dst_ring.cached_hp = READ_ONCE(*srng-
>>> >u.dst_ring.hp_addr);
>>>
>>> 2# validate HP
>>> if (srng->u.dst_ring.tp == srng->u.dst_ring.cached_hp)
>>> return NULL;
>>>
>>> 3# get desc
>>> desc = srng->ring_base_vaddr + srng->u.dst_ring.tp;
>>>
>>> 4# accessing desc
>>> ath11k_hal_desc_reo_parse_err(... desc, ...)
>>>
>>> Clearly each step depends on the results of previous steps. In this
>>> case the compiler/CPU
>>> is expected to be smart enough to not do any reordering, isn't it?
>>
>> Steps 3 and 4 can be done speculatively before the load in step 1 is
>> complete as long as the result is discarded if it turns out not to be
>> needed.
>>
>
> If the condition in step 2 is true and step 3 speculatively loads
> descriptor from TP before step 1, could this cause issues?
Sorry for typo, if the condition in step 2 is false and step 3
speculatively loads descriptor from TP before step 1, could this cause
issues?
>
> We previously had extensive discussions on this topic in the https://
> lore.kernel.org/linux-wireless/ecfe850c-b263-4bee-b888-
> c34178e690fc at quicinc.com/ thread. On my platform, dma_rmb() did not work
> as expected. The issue only disappeared after disabling PCIe endpoint
> relaxed ordering in firmware side. So it seems that HP was updated
> (Memory write) before descriptor (Memory write), which led to the problem.
>
>
>
>
>
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