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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/vm/mmu_notifier.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/vm/mmu_notifier.txt | 93 |
1 files changed, 93 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/vm/mmu_notifier.txt b/Documentation/vm/mmu_notifier.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..23b462566bb7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/vm/mmu_notifier.txt @@ -0,0 +1,93 @@ +When do you need to notify inside page table lock ? + +When clearing a pte/pmd we are given a choice to notify the event through +(notify version of *_clear_flush call mmu_notifier_invalidate_range) under +the page table lock. But that notification is not necessary in all cases. + +For secondary TLB (non CPU TLB) like IOMMU TLB or device TLB (when device use +thing like ATS/PASID to get the IOMMU to walk the CPU page table to access a +process virtual address space). There is only 2 cases when you need to notify +those secondary TLB while holding page table lock when clearing a pte/pmd: + + A) page backing address is free before mmu_notifier_invalidate_range_end() + B) a page table entry is updated to point to a new page (COW, write fault + on zero page, __replace_page(), ...) + +Case A is obvious you do not want to take the risk for the device to write to +a page that might now be used by some completely different task. + +Case B is more subtle. For correctness it requires the following sequence to +happen: + - take page table lock + - clear page table entry and notify ([pmd/pte]p_huge_clear_flush_notify()) + - set page table entry to point to new page + +If clearing the page table entry is not followed by a notify before setting +the new pte/pmd value then you can break memory model like C11 or C++11 for +the device. + +Consider the following scenario (device use a feature similar to ATS/PASID): + +Two address addrA and addrB such that |addrA - addrB| >= PAGE_SIZE we assume +they are write protected for COW (other case of B apply too). + +[Time N] -------------------------------------------------------------------- +CPU-thread-0 {try to write to addrA} +CPU-thread-1 {try to write to addrB} +CPU-thread-2 {} +CPU-thread-3 {} +DEV-thread-0 {read addrA and populate device TLB} +DEV-thread-2 {read addrB and populate device TLB} +[Time N+1] ------------------------------------------------------------------ +CPU-thread-0 {COW_step0: {mmu_notifier_invalidate_range_start(addrA)}} +CPU-thread-1 {COW_step0: {mmu_notifier_invalidate_range_start(addrB)}} +CPU-thread-2 {} +CPU-thread-3 {} +DEV-thread-0 {} +DEV-thread-2 {} +[Time N+2] ------------------------------------------------------------------ +CPU-thread-0 {COW_step1: {update page table to point to new page for addrA}} +CPU-thread-1 {COW_step1: {update page table to point to new page for addrB}} +CPU-thread-2 {} +CPU-thread-3 {} +DEV-thread-0 {} +DEV-thread-2 {} +[Time N+3] ------------------------------------------------------------------ +CPU-thread-0 {preempted} +CPU-thread-1 {preempted} +CPU-thread-2 {write to addrA which is a write to new page} +CPU-thread-3 {} +DEV-thread-0 {} +DEV-thread-2 {} +[Time N+3] ------------------------------------------------------------------ +CPU-thread-0 {preempted} +CPU-thread-1 {preempted} +CPU-thread-2 {} +CPU-thread-3 {write to addrB which is a write to new page} +DEV-thread-0 {} +DEV-thread-2 {} +[Time N+4] ------------------------------------------------------------------ +CPU-thread-0 {preempted} +CPU-thread-1 {COW_step3: {mmu_notifier_invalidate_range_end(addrB)}} +CPU-thread-2 {} +CPU-thread-3 {} +DEV-thread-0 {} +DEV-thread-2 {} +[Time N+5] ------------------------------------------------------------------ +CPU-thread-0 {preempted} +CPU-thread-1 {} +CPU-thread-2 {} +CPU-thread-3 {} +DEV-thread-0 {read addrA from old page} +DEV-thread-2 {read addrB from new page} + +So here because at time N+2 the clear page table entry was not pair with a +notification to invalidate the secondary TLB, the device see the new value for +addrB before seing the new value for addrA. This break total memory ordering +for the device. + +When changing a pte to write protect or to point to a new write protected page +with same content (KSM) it is fine to delay the mmu_notifier_invalidate_range +call to mmu_notifier_invalidate_range_end() outside the page table lock. This +is true even if the thread doing the page table update is preempted right after +releasing page table lock but before call mmu_notifier_invalidate_range_end(). |