| .. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 |
| .. _VAS-API: |
| |
| =================================================== |
| Virtual Accelerator Switchboard (VAS) userspace API |
| =================================================== |
| |
| Introduction |
| ============ |
| |
| Power9 processor introduced Virtual Accelerator Switchboard (VAS) which |
| allows both userspace and kernel communicate to co-processor |
| (hardware accelerator) referred to as the Nest Accelerator (NX). The NX |
| unit comprises of one or more hardware engines or co-processor types |
| such as 842 compression, GZIP compression and encryption. On power9, |
| userspace applications will have access to only GZIP Compression engine |
| which supports ZLIB and GZIP compression algorithms in the hardware. |
| |
| To communicate with NX, kernel has to establish a channel or window and |
| then requests can be submitted directly without kernel involvement. |
| Requests to the GZIP engine must be formatted as a co-processor Request |
| Block (CRB) and these CRBs must be submitted to the NX using COPY/PASTE |
| instructions to paste the CRB to hardware address that is associated with |
| the engine's request queue. |
| |
| The GZIP engine provides two priority levels of requests: Normal and |
| High. Only Normal requests are supported from userspace right now. |
| |
| This document explains userspace API that is used to interact with |
| kernel to setup channel / window which can be used to send compression |
| requests directly to NX accelerator. |
| |
| |
| Overview |
| ======== |
| |
| Application access to the GZIP engine is provided through |
| /dev/crypto/nx-gzip device node implemented by the VAS/NX device driver. |
| An application must open the /dev/crypto/nx-gzip device to obtain a file |
| descriptor (fd). Then should issue VAS_TX_WIN_OPEN ioctl with this fd to |
| establish connection to the engine. It means send window is opened on GZIP |
| engine for this process. Once a connection is established, the application |
| should use the mmap() system call to map the hardware address of engine's |
| request queue into the application's virtual address space. |
| |
| The application can then submit one or more requests to the the engine by |
| using copy/paste instructions and pasting the CRBs to the virtual address |
| (aka paste_address) returned by mmap(). User space can close the |
| established connection or send window by closing the file descriptior |
| (close(fd)) or upon the process exit. |
| |
| Note that applications can send several requests with the same window or |
| can establish multiple windows, but one window for each file descriptor. |
| |
| Following sections provide additional details and references about the |
| individual steps. |
| |
| NX-GZIP Device Node |
| =================== |
| |
| There is one /dev/crypto/nx-gzip node in the system and it provides |
| access to all GZIP engines in the system. The only valid operations on |
| /dev/crypto/nx-gzip are: |
| |
| * open() the device for read and write. |
| * issue VAS_TX_WIN_OPEN ioctl |
| * mmap() the engine's request queue into application's virtual |
| address space (i.e. get a paste_address for the co-processor |
| engine). |
| * close the device node. |
| |
| Other file operations on this device node are undefined. |
| |
| Note that the copy and paste operations go directly to the hardware and |
| do not go through this device. Refer COPY/PASTE document for more |
| details. |
| |
| Although a system may have several instances of the NX co-processor |
| engines (typically, one per P9 chip) there is just one |
| /dev/crypto/nx-gzip device node in the system. When the nx-gzip device |
| node is opened, Kernel opens send window on a suitable instance of NX |
| accelerator. It finds CPU on which the user process is executing and |
| determine the NX instance for the corresponding chip on which this CPU |
| belongs. |
| |
| Applications may chose a specific instance of the NX co-processor using |
| the vas_id field in the VAS_TX_WIN_OPEN ioctl as detailed below. |
| |
| A userspace library libnxz is available here but still in development: |
| https://github.com/abalib/power-gzip |
| |
| Applications that use inflate / deflate calls can link with libnxz |
| instead of libz and use NX GZIP compression without any modification. |
| |
| Open /dev/crypto/nx-gzip |
| ======================== |
| |
| The nx-gzip device should be opened for read and write. No special |
| privileges are needed to open the device. Each window corresponds to one |
| file descriptor. So if the userspace process needs multiple windows, |
| several open calls have to be issued. |
| |
| See open(2) system call man pages for other details such as return values, |
| error codes and restrictions. |
| |
| VAS_TX_WIN_OPEN ioctl |
| ===================== |
| |
| Applications should use the VAS_TX_WIN_OPEN ioctl as follows to establish |
| a connection with NX co-processor engine: |
| |
| :: |
| struct vas_tx_win_open_attr { |
| __u32 version; |
| __s16 vas_id; /* specific instance of vas or -1 |
| for default */ |
| __u16 reserved1; |
| __u64 flags; /* For future use */ |
| __u64 reserved2[6]; |
| }; |
| |
| version: The version field must be currently set to 1. |
| vas_id: If '-1' is passed, kernel will make a best-effort attempt |
| to assign an optimal instance of NX for the process. To |
| select the specific VAS instance, refer |
| "Discovery of available VAS engines" section below. |
| |
| flags, reserved1 and reserved2[6] fields are for future extension |
| and must be set to 0. |
| |
| The attributes attr for the VAS_TX_WIN_OPEN ioctl are defined as |
| follows: |
| #define VAS_MAGIC 'v' |
| #define VAS_TX_WIN_OPEN _IOW(VAS_MAGIC, 1, |
| struct vas_tx_win_open_attr) |
| |
| struct vas_tx_win_open_attr attr; |
| rc = ioctl(fd, VAS_TX_WIN_OPEN, &attr); |
| |
| The VAS_TX_WIN_OPEN ioctl returns 0 on success. On errors, it |
| returns -1 and sets the errno variable to indicate the error. |
| |
| Error conditions: |
| EINVAL fd does not refer to a valid VAS device. |
| EINVAL Invalid vas ID |
| EINVAL version is not set with proper value |
| EEXIST Window is already opened for the given fd |
| ENOMEM Memory is not available to allocate window |
| ENOSPC System has too many active windows (connections) |
| opened |
| EINVAL reserved fields are not set to 0. |
| |
| See the ioctl(2) man page for more details, error codes and |
| restrictions. |
| |
| mmap() NX-GZIP device |
| ===================== |
| |
| The mmap() system call for a NX-GZIP device fd returns a paste_address |
| that the application can use to copy/paste its CRB to the hardware engines. |
| :: |
| |
| paste_addr = mmap(addr, size, prot, flags, fd, offset); |
| |
| Only restrictions on mmap for a NX-GZIP device fd are: |
| * size should be PAGE_SIZE |
| * offset parameter should be 0ULL |
| |
| Refer to mmap(2) man page for additional details/restrictions. |
| In addition to the error conditions listed on the mmap(2) man |
| page, can also fail with one of the following error codes: |
| |
| EINVAL fd is not associated with an open window |
| (i.e mmap() does not follow a successful call |
| to the VAS_TX_WIN_OPEN ioctl). |
| EINVAL offset field is not 0ULL. |
| |
| Discovery of available VAS engines |
| ================================== |
| |
| Each available VAS instance in the system will have a device tree node |
| like /proc/device-tree/vas@* or /proc/device-tree/xscom@*/vas@*. |
| Determine the chip or VAS instance and use the corresponding ibm,vas-id |
| property value in this node to select specific VAS instance. |
| |
| Copy/Paste operations |
| ===================== |
| |
| Applications should use the copy and paste instructions to send CRB to NX. |
| Refer section 4.4 in PowerISA for Copy/Paste instructions: |
| https://openpowerfoundation.org/?resource_lib=power-isa-version-3-0 |
| |
| CRB Specification and use NX |
| ============================ |
| |
| Applications should format requests to the co-processor using the |
| co-processor Request Block (CRBs). Refer NX-GZIP user's manual for the format |
| of CRB and use NX from userspace such as sending requests and checking |
| request status. |
| |
| NX Fault handling |
| ================= |
| |
| Applications send requests to NX and wait for the status by polling on |
| co-processor Status Block (CSB) flags. NX updates status in CSB after each |
| request is processed. Refer NX-GZIP user's manual for the format of CSB and |
| status flags. |
| |
| In case if NX encounters translation error (called NX page fault) on CSB |
| address or any request buffer, raises an interrupt on the CPU to handle the |
| fault. Page fault can happen if an application passes invalid addresses or |
| request buffers are not in memory. The operating system handles the fault by |
| updating CSB with the following data: |
| |
| csb.flags = CSB_V; |
| csb.cc = CSB_CC_TRANSLATION; |
| csb.ce = CSB_CE_TERMINATION; |
| csb.address = fault_address; |
| |
| When an application receives translation error, it can touch or access |
| the page that has a fault address so that this page will be in memory. Then |
| the application can resend this request to NX. |
| |
| If the OS can not update CSB due to invalid CSB address, sends SEGV signal |
| to the process who opened the send window on which the original request was |
| issued. This signal returns with the following siginfo struct: |
| |
| siginfo.si_signo = SIGSEGV; |
| siginfo.si_errno = EFAULT; |
| siginfo.si_code = SEGV_MAPERR; |
| siginfo.si_addr = CSB adress; |
| |
| In the case of multi-thread applications, NX send windows can be shared |
| across all threads. For example, a child thread can open a send window, |
| but other threads can send requests to NX using this window. These |
| requests will be successful even in the case of OS handling faults as long |
| as CSB address is valid. If the NX request contains an invalid CSB address, |
| the signal will be sent to the child thread that opened the window. But if |
| the thread is exited without closing the window and the request is issued |
| using this window. the signal will be issued to the thread group leader |
| (tgid). It is up to the application whether to ignore or handle these |
| signals. |
| |
| NX-GZIP User's Manual: |
| https://github.com/libnxz/power-gzip/blob/master/power_nx_gzip_um.pdf |
| |
| Simple example |
| ============== |
| |
| :: |
| int use_nx_gzip() |
| { |
| int rc, fd; |
| void *addr; |
| struct vas_setup_attr txattr; |
| |
| fd = open("/dev/crypto/nx-gzip", O_RDWR); |
| if (fd < 0) { |
| fprintf(stderr, "open nx-gzip failed\n"); |
| return -1; |
| } |
| memset(&txattr, 0, sizeof(txattr)); |
| txattr.version = 1; |
| txattr.vas_id = -1 |
| rc = ioctl(fd, VAS_TX_WIN_OPEN, |
| (unsigned long)&txattr); |
| if (rc < 0) { |
| fprintf(stderr, "ioctl() n %d, error %d\n", |
| rc, errno); |
| return rc; |
| } |
| addr = mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, |
| MAP_SHARED, fd, 0ULL); |
| if (addr == MAP_FAILED) { |
| fprintf(stderr, "mmap() failed, errno %d\n", |
| errno); |
| return -errno; |
| } |
| do { |
| //Format CRB request with compression or |
| //uncompression |
| // Refer tests for vas_copy/vas_paste |
| vas_copy((&crb, 0, 1); |
| vas_paste(addr, 0, 1); |
| // Poll on csb.flags with timeout |
| // csb address is listed in CRB |
| } while (true) |
| close(fd) or window can be closed upon process exit |
| } |
| |
| Refer https://github.com/abalib/power-gzip for tests or more |
| use cases. |