[LSF/MM/BFP ATTEND] [LSF/MM/BFP TOPIC] Storage: Copy Offload

[Kanchan Joshi]

On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 12:51 PM Chaitanya Kulkarni
<chaitanyak at nvidia.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> * Background :-
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Copy offload is a feature that allows file-systems or storage devices
> to be instructed to copy files/logical blocks without requiring
> involvement of the local CPU.
>
> With reference to the RISC-V summit keynote [1] single threaded
> performance is limiting due to Denard scaling and multi-threaded
> performance is slowing down due Moore's law limitations. With the rise
> of SNIA Computation Technical Storage Working Group (TWG) [2],
> offloading computations to the device or over the fabrics is becoming
> popular as there are several solutions available [2]. One of the common
> operation which is popular in the kernel and is not merged yet is Copy
> offload over the fabrics or on to the device.
>
> * Problem :-
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The original work which is done by Martin is present here [3]. The
> latest work which is posted by Mikulas [4] is not merged yet. These two
> approaches are totally different from each other. Several storage
> vendors discourage mixing copy offload requests with regular READ/WRITE
> I/O. Also, the fact that the operation fails if a copy request ever
> needs to be split as it traverses the stack it has the unfortunate
> side-effect of preventing copy offload from working in pretty much
> every common deployment configuration out there.
>
> * Current state of the work :-
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> With [3] being hard to handle arbitrary DM/MD stacking without
> splitting the command in two, one for copying IN and one for copying
> OUT. Which is then demonstrated by the [4] why [3] it is not a suitable
> candidate. Also, with [4] there is an unresolved problem with the
> two-command approach about how to handle changes to the DM layout
> between an IN and OUT operations.
>
> We have conducted a call with interested people late last year since
> lack of LSFMMM and we would like to share the details with broader
> community members.

I'm keen on this topic and would like to join the F2F discussion.
The Novmber call did establish some consensus on requirements.
Planning to have a round or two of code-discussions soon.


Thanks,
-- 
Kanchan