CXL 2.0 allows for dynamic provisioning of new memory regions (system
physical address resources like "System RAM" and "Persistent Memory").
Whereas DDR and PMEM resources are conveyed statically at boot, CXL
allows for assembling and instantiating new regions from the available
capacity of CXL memory expanders in the system.
Sysfs with an "echo $region_name > $create_region_attribute" interface
is chosen as the mechanism to initiate the provisioning process. This
was chosen over ioctl() and netlink() to keep the configuration
interface entirely in a pseudo-fs interface, and it was chosen over
configfs since, aside from this one creation event, the interface is
read-mostly. I.e. configfs supports cases where an object is designed to
be provisioned each boot, like an iSCSI storage target, and CXL region
creation is mostly for PMEM regions which are created usually once
per-lifetime of a server instance. This is an improvement over nvdimm
that pre-created "seed" devices that tended to confuse users looking to
determine which devices are active and which are idle.
Recall that the major change that CXL brings over previous persistent
memory architectures is the ability to dynamically define new regions.
Compare that to drivers like 'nfit' where the region configuration is
statically defined by platform firmware.
Regions are created as a child of a root decoder that encompasses an
address space with constraints. When created through sysfs, the root
decoder is explicit. When created from an LSA's region structure a root
decoder will possibly need to be inferred by the driver.
Upon region creation through sysfs, a vacant region is created with a
unique name. Regions have a number of attributes that must be configured
before the region can be bound to the driver where HDM decoder program
is completed.
An example of creating a new region:
- Allocate a new region name:
region=$(cat /sys/bus/cxl/devices/decoder0.0/create_pmem_region)
- Create a new region by name:
while
region=$(cat /sys/bus/cxl/devices/decoder0.0/create_pmem_region)
! echo $region > /sys/bus/cxl/devices/decoder0.0/create_pmem_region
do true; done
- Region now exists in sysfs:
stat -t /sys/bus/cxl/devices/decoder0.0/$region
- Delete the region, and name:
echo $region > /sys/bus/cxl/devices/decoder0.0/delete_region
Signed-off-by: Ben Widawsky <bwidawsk@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Jonathan Cameron <Jonathan.Cameron@huawei.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/165784333909.1758207.794374602146306032.stgit@dwillia2-xfh.jf.intel.com
[djbw: simplify locking, reword changelog]
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
779dd20cfb