Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC] virtio-pci: Allow PCIe virtio devices on root bus

[David Gibson]

On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 01:48:42PM +1100, David Gibson wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 04:59:33PM +0200, Marcel Apfelbaum wrote:
> > On 02/15/2017 03:45 AM, David Gibson wrote:
> > > On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 02:53:08PM +0200, Marcel Apfelbaum wrote:
> > > > On 02/14/2017 06:15 AM, David Gibson wrote:
> > > > > On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 12:14:23PM +0200, Marcel Apfelbaum wrote:
> > > > > > On 02/13/2017 06:33 AM, David Gibson wrote:
> > > > > > > On Sun, Feb 12, 2017 at 09:05:46PM +0200, Marcel Apfelbaum wrote:
> > > > > > > > On 02/10/2017 02:37 AM, David Gibson wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Thu, Feb 09, 2017 at 10:04:47AM +0100, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > On 02/09/17 05:16, David Gibson wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > On Wed, Feb 08, 2017 at 11:40:50AM +0100, Laszlo Ersek 
> > > > > > > > > > > wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > > > On 02/08/17 07:16, David Gibson wrote:
[snip]
> > > >   Which means that you can use it to
> > > > > drive PCIe devices just fine.  "Bus level" PCIe extensions like AER
> > > > > and PCIe standard hotplug won't work, but PAPR has its own mechanisms
> > > > > for those (common between PCI and PCIe).
> > > > > 
> > > > > I did float the idea of having the pseries PCI bus remain plain PCI
> > > > > but with a special flag to allow PCIe devices to be attached to it
> > > > > anyway.  It wasn't greeted with much enthusiasm..
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Can you point me to the discussion please? It seems similar to what I 
> > > > proposed above.
> > > 
> > > Sorry, I was misleading.  I think I just raised that idea with Andrea
> > > and a few other people internally, not on one of the lists at large.
> > > 
> > > > As you properly described it, is much closer to PCI then PCIe, even the 
> > > > only characteristic
> > > > that makes it "a little" PCIe, the Extended Configuration Space support,
> > > > is done with an alternative interface.
> > > > 
> > > > I agree the PAPR bus is not PCIe.
> > > 
> > > Ok, so if we take that direction, the question becomes how do we let
> > > PCIe devices plug into this mostly-not-PCIe bus.  Maybe introduce a
> > > "pci_bus_accepts_express()" function that will replace many, but not
> > > all current uses of "pci_bus_is_express()"?
> > > 
> > 
> > Sounds good and I think Eduardo is already working on exactly this
> > idea, however he is on PTO now. It is better to synchronize with him.
> 
> Ah, right.  Do you know when he'll be back?  This is semi-urgent for
> Power.
> 
> 
> > > Such a helper could maybe simplify the logic in virtio-pci (and XHCI?)
> > > by returning false on an x86 root bus.
> > > 
> > 
> > The rule would me more complicated. We don't want to completely remove the
> > possibility to have PCIe devices as part of Root Complex. it seems
> > like I am contradicting myself, but no).
> > This is why we have guidelines and  not hard-coded policies.
> > Also ,the QEMU way is to be more permissive. We provide guidelines and sane
> > defaults, but we let the user to chose.
> > 
> > Getting back to our problem, the rule would be:
> > hybrid devices should be PCI or PCIe for a bus?
> > PAPR bus should return 'PCIe' for hybrid devices.
> > X86 bus should return 'PCIe' if not root.
> 
> Ok.

Wait, actually.. we have two possible directions to go, both of which
have been mentioned in the thread, but I don't think we've settled on
one:

1) Have pseries create a PCIe bus (as my first cut draft does).

That should allow pure PCIe devices to appear either under a port or
(more usually for PAPR) as "integrated endpoints".  In addition we'd
need as suggested above a "pcie_hybrid_type()" function that would
tell hybrid devices to also appear as PCIe rather than PCI.

2) Have pseries create a vanilla PCI bus (or a special PAPR PCI
   variant)

Appearing as vanilla PCI would in a number of ways more closely match
the way PCI buses are handled on PAPR.  However, we still need to
connect PCIe devices to it.  So we'd need some 'bus_accepts_pcie()'
hook and use that (in place of pci_bus_is_express()) to determine both
whether we can attach pure PCIe devices and that hybrid devices should
appear as PCIe rather than plain PCI.


Based on the immediately preceding discussion, I was leaning towards
(2).  Is that your feeling as well?

-- 
David Gibson                    | I'll have my music baroque, and my code
david AT gibson.dropbear.id.au  | minimalist, thank you.  NOT _the_ _other_
                                | _way_ _around_!
http://www.ozlabs.org/~dgibson

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature