Memory providers multiplexing (Was: [PATCH net-next v4 4/5] page_pool: remove PP_FLAG_PAGE_FRAG flag)

[Jakub Kicinski]

On Thu, 29 Jun 2023 19:27:46 -0700 Mina Almasry wrote:
> I've discussed your page pool frontend idea with our gve owners and
> the idea is attractive. In particular it would be good not to insert
> much custom code into the driver to support device memory pages or
> other page types. I plan on trying to change my approach to match the
> page pool provider you have in progress here:
> https://github.com/kuba-moo/linux/tree/pp-providers
> 
> In particular the main challenge right now seems to be that my device
> memory pages are ZONE_DEVICE pages, which can't be inserted to the
> page pool as-is due to the union in struct page between the page pool
> entries and the ZONE_DEVICE entries. I have some ideas on how to work
> around that I'm looking into.

Right, have you talked to Willem? I mentioned to him that I initially
pursued the idea of using the page pool as an abstraction but I
realized that fitting both the dma addr and the frag reference count
into struct page which isn't just a basic page will be a challenge.

So the second best thing seems to be to create an API which matches 
the page pool API, and have it select between a page pool and another
provider based on user configuration. As you said the main goal is to
be able to feed kernel / user / device memory to the driver without
having to modify driver code.

I thought this would live "above" the page pool (perhaps that's what
you mean by gen_pool) but Jesper brought up integrating it into the
(middle of?) page pool and have page pool switch on the pp_magic.
No strong preference on which on is better, seems like something that
can only be ironed out by modifying a couple of drivers to find out
what fits best :(

I'm hoping to jump back into the pp_provider work and finish that up
over the next few days, to at least post a PoC. Even if it doesn't work
for user / device memory - being able to feed the page pool from huge
pages is already a big win for the IOTLB.