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author | C.J. Collier <cjcollier@linuxfoundation.org> | 2016-06-14 07:54:47 -0700 |
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committer | C.J. Collier <cjcollier@linuxfoundation.org> | 2016-06-14 07:55:43 -0700 |
commit | 5129044dce1f85ce4950f31bcf90f3886466f06a (patch) | |
tree | 1c6269614c0c15ffef8451c58ae8f8b30a1bc804 /doc/guides/prog_guide/ivshmem_lib.rst | |
parent | e04be89c2409570e0055b2cda60bd11395bb93b0 (diff) |
Imported upstream release 16.04
* gbp import-orig ../dpdk-16.04.tar.xz
Change-Id: Iac2196db782ba322f6974d8a752acc34ce5024c3
Signed-off-by: C.J. Collier <cjcollier@linuxfoundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/guides/prog_guide/ivshmem_lib.rst')
-rw-r--r-- | doc/guides/prog_guide/ivshmem_lib.rst | 158 |
1 files changed, 158 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/guides/prog_guide/ivshmem_lib.rst b/doc/guides/prog_guide/ivshmem_lib.rst new file mode 100644 index 00000000..9401ccf2 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/guides/prog_guide/ivshmem_lib.rst @@ -0,0 +1,158 @@ +.. BSD LICENSE + Copyright(c) 2010-2014 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. + All rights reserved. + + Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without + modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions + are met: + + * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright + notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. + * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright + notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in + the documentation and/or other materials provided with the + distribution. + * Neither the name of Intel Corporation nor the names of its + contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived + from this software without specific prior written permission. + + THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS + "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT + LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR + A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT + OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, + SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT + LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, + DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY + THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT + (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE + OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. + +IVSHMEM Library +=============== + +The DPDK IVSHMEM library facilitates fast zero-copy data sharing among virtual machines +(host-to-guest or guest-to-guest) by means of QEMU's IVSHMEM mechanism. + +The library works by providing a command line for QEMU to map several hugepages into a single IVSHMEM device. +For the guest to know what is inside any given IVSHMEM device +(and to distinguish between DPDK and non-DPDK IVSHMEM devices), +a metadata file is also mapped into the IVSHMEM segment. +No work needs to be done by the guest application to map IVSHMEM devices into memory; +they are automatically recognized by the DPDK Environment Abstraction Layer (EAL). + +A typical DPDK IVSHMEM use case looks like the following. + + +.. figure:: img/ivshmem.* + + Typical Ivshmem use case + + +The same could work with several virtual machines, providing host-to-VM or VM-to-VM communication. +The maximum number of metadata files is 32 (by default) and each metadata file can contain different (or even the same) hugepages. +The only constraint is that each VM has to have access to the memory it is sharing with other entities (be it host or another VM). +For example, if the user wants to share the same memzone across two VMs, each VM must have that memzone in its metadata file. + +IVHSHMEM Library API Overview +----------------------------- + +The following is a simple guide to using the IVSHMEM Library API: + +* Call rte_ivshmem_metadata_create() to create a new metadata file. + The metadata name is used to distinguish between multiple metadata files. + +* Populate each metadata file with DPDK data structures. + This can be done using the following API calls: + + * rte_ivhshmem_metadata_add_memzone() to add rte_memzone to metadata file + + * rte_ivshmem_metadata_add_ring() to add rte_ring to metadata file + + * rte_ivshmem_metadata_add_mempool() to add rte_mempool to metadata file + +* Finally, call rte_ivshmem_metadata_cmdline_generate() to generate the command line for QEMU. + Multiple metadata files (and thus multiple command lines) can be supplied to a single VM. + +.. note:: + + Only data structures fully residing in DPDK hugepage memory work correctly. + Supported data structures created by malloc(), mmap() + or otherwise using non-DPDK memory cause undefined behavior and even a segmentation fault. + +IVSHMEM Environment Configuration +--------------------------------- + +The steps needed to successfully run IVSHMEM applications are the following: + +* Compile a special version of QEMU from sources. + + The source code can be found on the QEMU website (currently, version 1.4.x is supported, but version 1.5.x is known to work also), + however, the source code will need to be patched to support using regular files as the IVSHMEM memory backend. + The patch is not included in the DPDK package, + but is available on the `Intel®DPDK-vswitch project webpage <https://01.org/packet-processing/intel%C2%AE-ovdk>`_ + (either separately or in a DPDK vSwitch package). + +* Enable IVSHMEM library in the DPDK build configuration. + + In the default configuration, IVSHMEM library is not compiled. To compile the IVSHMEM library, + one has to either use one of the provided IVSHMEM targets + (for example, x86_64-ivshmem-linuxapp-gcc), + or set CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_IVSHMEM to "y" in the build configuration. + +* Set up hugepage memory on the virtual machine. + + The guest applications run as regular DPDK (primary) processes and thus need their own hugepage memory set up inside the VM. + The process is identical to the one described in the *DPDK Getting Started Guide*. + +Best Practices for Writing IVSHMEM Applications +----------------------------------------------- + +When considering the use of IVSHMEM for sharing memory, security implications need to be carefully evaluated. +IVSHMEM is not suitable for untrusted guests, as IVSHMEM is essentially a window into the host process memory. +This also has implications for the multiple VM scenarios. +While the IVSHMEM library tries to share as little memory as possible, +it is quite probable that data designated for one VM might also be present in an IVSMHMEM device designated for another VM. +Consequently, any shared memory corruption will affect both host and all VMs sharing that particular memory. + +IVSHMEM applications essentially behave like multi-process applications, +so it is important to implement access serialization to data and thread safety. +DPDK ring structures are already thread-safe, however, +any custom data structures that the user might need would have to be thread-safe also. + +Similar to regular DPDK multi-process applications, +it is not recommended to use function pointers as functions might have different memory addresses in different processes. + +It is best to avoid freeing the rte_mbuf structure on a different machine from where it was allocated, +that is, if the mbuf was allocated on the host, the host should free it. +Consequently, any packet transmission and reception should also happen on the same machine (whether virtual or physical). +Failing to do so may lead to data corruption in the mempool cache. + +Despite the IVSHMEM mechanism being zero-copy and having good performance, +it is still desirable to do processing in batches and follow other procedures described in +:ref:`Performance Optimization <Performance_Optimization>`. + +Best Practices for Running IVSHMEM Applications +----------------------------------------------- + +For performance reasons, +it is best to pin host processes and QEMU processes to different cores so that they do not interfere with each other. +If NUMA support is enabled, it is also desirable to keep host process' hugepage memory and QEMU process on the same NUMA node. + +For the best performance across all NUMA nodes, each QEMU core should be pinned to host CPU core on the appropriate NUMA node. +QEMU's virtual NUMA nodes should also be set up to correspond to physical NUMA nodes. +More on how to set up DPDK and QEMU NUMA support can be found in *DPDK Getting Started Guide* and +`QEMU documentation <http://qemu.weilnetz.de/qemu-doc.html>`_ respectively. +A script called cpu_layout.py is provided with the DPDK package (in the tools directory) +that can be used to identify which CPU cores correspond to which NUMA node. + +The QEMU IVSHMEM command line creation should be considered the last step before starting the virtual machine. +Currently, there is no hot plug support for QEMU IVSHMEM devices, +so one cannot add additional memory to an IVSHMEM device once it has been created. +Therefore, the correct sequence to run an IVSHMEM application is to run host application first, +obtain the command lines for each IVSHMEM device and then run all QEMU instances with guest applications afterwards. + +It is important to note that once QEMU is started, it holds on to the hugepages it uses for IVSHMEM devices. +As a result, if the user wishes to shut down or restart the IVSHMEM host application, +it is not enough to simply shut the application down. +The virtual machine must also be shut down (if not, it will hold onto outdated host data). |