drm/i915: Use HW semaphores for inter-engine synchronisation on gen8+

Having introduced per-context seqno, we now have a means to identity
progress across the system without feel of rollback as befell the
global_seqno. That is we can program a MI_SEMAPHORE_WAIT operation in
advance of submission safe in the knowledge that our target seqno and
address is stable.

However, since we are telling the GPU to busy-spin on the target address
until it matches the signaling seqno, we only want to do so when we are
sure that busy-spin will be completed quickly. To achieve this we only
submit the request to HW once the signaler is itself executing (modulo
preemption causing us to wait longer), and we only do so for default and
above priority requests (so that idle priority tasks never themselves
hog the GPU waiting for others).

As might be reasonably expected, HW semaphores excel in inter-engine
synchronisation microbenchmarks (where the 3x reduced latency / increased
throughput more than offset the power cost of spinning on a second ring)
and have significant improvement (can be up to ~10%, most see no change)
for single clients that utilize multiple engines (typically media players
and transcoders), without regressing multiple clients that can saturate
the system or changing the power envelope dramatically.

v3: Drop the older NEQ branch, now we pin the signaler's HWSP anyway.
v4: Tell the world and include it as part of scheduler caps.

Testcase: igt/gem_exec_whisper
Testcase: igt/benchmarks/gem_wsim
Signed-off-by: Chris Wilson <chris@chris-wilson.co.uk>
Cc: Tvrtko Ursulin <tvrtko.ursulin@intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Tvrtko Ursulin <tvrtko.ursulin@intel.com>
Link: https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/msgid/20190301170901.8340-3-chris@chris-wilson.co.uk

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_ringbuffer.h b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_ringbuffer.h
index b8ec7e40a59b..2e7264119ec4 100644
--- a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_ringbuffer.h
+++ b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_ringbuffer.h
@@ -499,6 +499,7 @@ struct intel_engine_cs {
 #define I915_ENGINE_NEEDS_CMD_PARSER BIT(0)
 #define I915_ENGINE_SUPPORTS_STATS   BIT(1)
 #define I915_ENGINE_HAS_PREEMPTION   BIT(2)
+#define I915_ENGINE_HAS_SEMAPHORES   BIT(3)
 	unsigned int flags;
 
 	/*
@@ -576,6 +577,12 @@ intel_engine_has_preemption(const struct intel_engine_cs *engine)
 	return engine->flags & I915_ENGINE_HAS_PREEMPTION;
 }
 
+static inline bool
+intel_engine_has_semaphores(const struct intel_engine_cs *engine)
+{
+	return engine->flags & I915_ENGINE_HAS_SEMAPHORES;
+}
+
 void intel_engines_set_scheduler_caps(struct drm_i915_private *i915);
 
 static inline bool __execlists_need_preempt(int prio, int last)