Re: [RFC PATCH 0/5] drm/amdkfd: Add batch SVM range registration support

["Christian König" <christian.koenig@amd.com>]

Hi Honglei,

On 11/12/25 13:10, Honglei1.Huang@amd.com wrote:
>>> Paravirtualized environments exacerbate this issue, as KVM's memory backing
>>> is often non-contiguous at the host level. In virtualized environments, guest
>>> physical memory appears contiguous to the VM but is actually scattered across
>>> host memory pages. This fragmentation means that what appears as a single
>>> large allocation in the guest may require multiple discrete SVM registrations
>>> to properly handle the underlying host memory layout, further multiplying the
>>> number of required ioctl calls.
>> SVM with dynamic migration under KVM is most likely a dead end to begin with.
>>
>> The only possibility to implement it is with memory pinning which is basically userptr.
>>
>> Or a rather slow client side IOMMU emulation to catch concurrent DMA transfers to get the necessary information onto the host side.
>>
>> Intel calls this approach colIOMMU: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/atc20-paper236-slides-tian.pdf
>>
> 
> This is very helpful context.Your confirmation that memory pinning (userptr-style) is the practical approach helps me understand that what I initially saw as a "workaround" is actually the intended solution for this use case.

Well "intended" is maybe not the right term, I would rather say "possible" with the current SW/HW stack design in virtualization.

In general fault based SVM/HMM would still be nice to have even under virtualization environment, it's just simply not really feasible at the moment.

> For colIOMMU, I'll study it to better understand the alternatives and their trade-offs.

I haven't looked into it in detail either. It's mostly developed with the pass-through use case in mind, but avoiding pinning memory on the host side which is one of many per-requisites to have some HMM based migration working as well.

...>>> Why Submit This RFC?
>>> ====================
>>>
>>> Despite the limitations above, I am submitting this series to:
>>>
>>> 1. **Start the Discussion**: I want community feedback on whether batch
>>>     registration is a useful feature worth pursuing.
>>>
>>> 2. **Explore Better Alternatives**: Is there a way to achieve batch
>>>     registration without pinning? Could I extend HMM to better support
>>>     this use case?
>>
>> There is an ongoing unification project between KFD and KGD, we are currently looking into the SVM part on a weekly basis.
>>
>> Saying that we probably need a really good justification to add new features to the KFD interfaces cause this is going to delay the unification.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Christian.
> 
> Thank you for sharing this critical information. Is there a public discussion forum or mailing list for the KFD/KGD unification where I could follow progress and understand the design direction?

Alex is driving this. No mailing list, but IIRC Alex has organized a lot of topics on some confluence page, but I can't find it of hand.

> Regarding the use case justification: I need to be honest here - the
> primary driver for this feature is indeed KVM/virtualized environments.
> The scattered allocation problem exists in native environments too, but
> the overhead is tolerable there. However, I do want to raise one consideration for the unified interface design:
> 
> GPU computing in virtualized/cloud environments is growing rapidly, major cloud providers (AWS, Azure) now offer GPU instances ROCm in containers/VMs is becoming more common.So while my current use case is specific to KVM, the virtualized GPU workload pattern may become more prevalent.
> 
> So during the unified interface design, please keep the door open for batch-style operations if they don't complicate the core design.

Oh, yes! That's definitely valuable information to have and a more or less a new requirement for the SVM userspace API.

I already expected that we sooner or later run into such things, but having it definitely confirmed is really good to have.

Regards,
Christian.

> 
> I really appreciate your time and guidance on this.
> 
> Regards,
> Honglei
> 
> 
> 
>>
>>>
>>> 3. **Understand Trade-offs**: For some workloads, the performance benefit
>>>     of batch registration might outweigh the drawbacks of pinning. I'd
>>>     like to understand where the balance lies.
>>>
>>> Questions for the Community
>>> ============================
>>>
>>> 1. Are there existing mechanisms in HMM or mm that could support batch
>>>     operations without pinning?
>>>
>>> 2. Would a different approach (e.g., async registration, delayed validation)
>>>     be more acceptable?
>>>
>>> Alternative Approaches Considered
>>> ==================================
>>>
>>> I've considered several alternatives:
>>>
>>> A) **Pure HMM approach**: Register ranges without pinning, rely entirely on
>>>
>>> B) **Userspace batching library**: Hide multiple ioctls behind a library.
>>>
>>> Patch Series Overview
>>> =====================
>>>
>>> Patch 1: Add KFD_IOCTL_SVM_ATTR_MAPPED attribute type
>>> Patch 2: Define data structures for batch SVM range registration
>>> Patch 3: Add new AMDKFD_IOC_SVM_RANGES ioctl command
>>> Patch 4: Implement page pinning mechanism for scattered ranges
>>> Patch 5: Wire up the ioctl handler and attribute processing
>>>
>>> Testing
>>> =======
>>>
>>> The series has been tested with:
>>> - Multiple scattered malloc() allocations (2-2000+ ranges)
>>> - Various allocation sizes (4KB to 1G+)
>>> - GPU compute workloads using the registered ranges
>>> - Memory pressure scenarios
>>> - OpecnCL CTS in KVM guest environment
>>> - HIP catch tests in KVM guest environment
>>> - Some AI applications like Stable Diffusion, ComfyUI, 3B LLM models based
>>>    on HuggingFace transformers
>>>
>>> I understand this approach is not ideal and are committed to working on a
>>> better solution based on community feedback. This RFC is the starting point
>>> for that discussion.
>>>
>>> Thank you for your time and consideration.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Honglei Huang
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> Honglei Huang (5):
>>>    drm/amdkfd: Add KFD_IOCTL_SVM_ATTR_MAPPED attribute
>>>    drm/amdkfd: Add SVM ranges data structures
>>>    drm/amdkfd: Add AMDKFD_IOC_SVM_RANGES ioctl command
>>>    drm/amdkfd: Add support for pinned user pages in SVM ranges
>>>    drm/amdkfd: Wire up SVM ranges ioctl handler
>>>
>>>   drivers/gpu/drm/amd/amdkfd/kfd_chardev.c |  67 +++++++++++
>>>   drivers/gpu/drm/amd/amdkfd/kfd_svm.c     | 232 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
>>>   drivers/gpu/drm/amd/amdkfd/kfd_svm.h     |   3 +
>>>   include/uapi/linux/kfd_ioctl.h           |  52 +++++++-
>>>   4 files changed, 348 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
>>
>