Documentation/virt/acrn/io-request.rst

.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0

I/O request handling
====================

An I/O request of a User VM, which is constructed by the hypervisor, is
distributed by the ACRN Hypervisor Service Module to an I/O client
corresponding to the address range of the I/O request. Details of I/O request
handling are described in the following sections.

1. I/O request
--------------

For each User VM, there is a shared 4-KByte memory region used for I/O requests
communication between the hypervisor and Service VM. An I/O request is a
256-byte structure buffer, which is 'struct acrn_io_request', that is filled by
an I/O handler of the hypervisor when a trapped I/O access happens in a User
VM. ACRN userspace in the Service VM first allocates a 4-KByte page and passes
the GPA (Guest Physical Address) of the buffer to the hypervisor. The buffer is
used as an array of 16 I/O request slots with each I/O request slot being 256
bytes. This array is indexed by vCPU ID.

2. I/O clients
--------------

An I/O client is responsible for handling User VM I/O requests whose accessed
GPA falls in a certain range. Multiple I/O clients can be associated with each
User VM. There is a special client associated with each User VM, called the
default client, that handles all I/O requests that do not fit into the range of
any other clients. The ACRN userspace acts as the default client for each User
VM.

Below illustration shows the relationship between I/O requests shared buffer,
I/O requests and I/O clients.

::

     +------------------------------------------------------+
     |                                       Service VM     |
     |+--------------------------------------------------+  |
     ||      +----------------------------------------+  |  |
     ||      | shared page            ACRN userspace  |  |  |
     ||      |    +-----------------+  +------------+ |  |  |
     ||   +----+->| acrn_io_request |<-+  default   | |  |  |
     ||   |  | |  +-----------------+  | I/O client | |  |  |
     ||   |  | |  |       ...       |  +------------+ |  |  |
     ||   |  | |  +-----------------+                 |  |  |
     ||   |  +-|--------------------------------------+  |  |
     ||---|----|-----------------------------------------|  |
     ||   |    |                             kernel      |  |
     ||   |    |            +----------------------+     |  |
     ||   |    |            | +-------------+  HSM |     |  |
     ||   |    +--------------+             |      |     |  |
     ||   |                 | | I/O clients |      |     |  |
     ||   |                 | |             |      |     |  |
     ||   |                 | +-------------+      |     |  |
     ||   |                 +----------------------+     |  |
     |+---|----------------------------------------------+  |
     +----|-------------------------------------------------+
          |
     +----|-------------------------------------------------+
     |  +-+-----------+                                     |
     |  | I/O handler |              ACRN Hypervisor        |
     |  +-------------+                                     |
     +------------------------------------------------------+

3. I/O request state transition
-------------------------------

The state transitions of an ACRN I/O request are as follows.

::

   FREE -> PENDING -> PROCESSING -> COMPLETE -> FREE -> ...

- FREE: this I/O request slot is empty
- PENDING: a valid I/O request is pending in this slot
- PROCESSING: the I/O request is being processed
- COMPLETE: the I/O request has been processed

An I/O request in COMPLETE or FREE state is owned by the hypervisor. HSM and
ACRN userspace are in charge of processing the others.

4. Processing flow of I/O requests
----------------------------------

a. The I/O handler of the hypervisor will fill an I/O request with PENDING
   state when a trapped I/O access happens in a User VM.
b. The hypervisor makes an upcall, which is a notification interrupt, to
   the Service VM.
c. The upcall handler schedules a worker to dispatch I/O requests.
d. The worker looks for the PENDING I/O requests, assigns them to different
   registered clients based on the address of the I/O accesses, updates
   their state to PROCESSING, and notifies the corresponding client to handle.
e. The notified client handles the assigned I/O requests.
f. The HSM updates I/O requests states to COMPLETE and notifies the hypervisor
   of the completion via hypercalls.