On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 3:35 PM Michael S. Tsirkin [off-list ref] wrote:

On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 04:05:09PM +0800, Xie Yongji wrote:

quoted

This series introduces a framework, which can be used to implement
vDPA Devices in a userspace program. The work consist of two parts:
control path forwarding and data path offloading.

In the control path, the VDUSE driver will make use of message
mechnism to forward the config operation from vdpa bus driver
to userspace. Userspace can use read()/write() to receive/reply
those control messages.

In the data path, the core is mapping dma buffer into VDUSE
daemon's address space, which can be implemented in different ways
depending on the vdpa bus to which the vDPA device is attached.

In virtio-vdpa case, we implements a MMU-based on-chip IOMMU driver with
bounce-buffering mechanism to achieve that. And in vhost-vdpa case, the dma
buffer is reside in a userspace memory region which can be shared to the
VDUSE userspace processs via transferring the shmfd.

The details and our user case is shown below:

------------------------    -------------------------   ----------------------------------------------
|            Container |    |              QEMU(VM) |   |                               VDUSE daemon |
|       ---------      |    |  -------------------  |   | ------------------------- ---------------- |
|       |dev/vdx|      |    |  |/dev/vhost-vdpa-x|  |   | | vDPA device emulation | | block driver | |
------------+-----------     -----------+------------   -------------+----------------------+---------
            |                           |                            |                      |
            |                           |                            |                      |
------------+---------------------------+----------------------------+----------------------+---------
|    | block device |           |  vhost device |            | vduse driver |          | TCP/IP |    |
|    -------+--------           --------+--------            -------+--------          -----+----    |
|           |                           |                           |                       |        |
| ----------+----------       ----------+-----------         -------+-------                |        |
| | virtio-blk driver |       |  vhost-vdpa driver |         | vdpa device |                |        |
| ----------+----------       ----------+-----------         -------+-------                |        |
|           |      virtio bus           |                           |                       |        |
|   --------+----+-----------           |                           |                       |        |
|                |                      |                           |                       |        |
|      ----------+----------            |                           |                       |        |
|      | virtio-blk device |            |                           |                       |        |
|      ----------+----------            |                           |                       |        |
|                |                      |                           |                       |        |
|     -----------+-----------           |                           |                       |        |
|     |  virtio-vdpa driver |           |                           |                       |        |
|     -----------+-----------           |                           |                       |        |
|                |                      |                           |    vdpa bus           |        |
|     -----------+----------------------+---------------------------+------------           |        |
|                                                                                        ---+---     |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| NIC |------
                                                                                         ---+---
                                                                                            |
                                                                                   ---------+---------
                                                                                   | Remote Storages |
                                                                                   -------------------

This all looks quite similar to vhost-user-block except that one
does not need any kernel support at all.

So I am still scratching my head about its advantages over
vhost-user-block.

It plays the same role as vhost-user-block in VM user cases.

quoted

We make use of it to implement a block device connecting to
our distributed storage, which can be used both in containers and
VMs. Thus, we can have an unified technology stack in this two cases.

Maybe the container part is the answer. How does that stack look?

Yes, it enables containers to reuse virtio software stack. We can have
one daemon that provides service to both containers and virtual
machines.

Thanks，
Yongji