stds-1394: empirical character of SBP2 scatter/gather lists?

John Nels Fuller jfuller at computer.org
Tue Jun 26 21:13:19 PDT 2001


* From the T10 Reflector (t10 at t10.org), posted by:
* "John Nels Fuller" <jfuller at computer.org>
*
Which OS are you using?  What you are asking about is primarily a function
of the OS.  The target device should not care about how the page table is
specified other than the size of packets it must create (addresses are just
numbers that are filled into the headers).  I know from a past life that
Windows 2000 and XP will generate the kind of page table that you expect
(but with page size of 0), but that Win 98 and ME will be much more
arbitrary (in fact Win 98 was the reason that unrestricted page tables were
added to the standard).  If you want to question Microsoft's implementation
you should email 1394 at microsoft.com.

jnf

_________________________
John Nels Fuller
Principal Engineer -- Standards
Interconnect Architecture Lab
Sony US Research Labs
24034 NE 29th Street
Sammamish, WA   98074-5468   USA
Primary phone (cell): +1 206 409 0338
Office (no messages): +1 425 558 0464
Fax: +1 425 558 0575
email: jfuller at computer.org



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-stds-1394 at majordomo.ieee.org
[mailto:owner-stds-1394 at majordomo.ieee.org]On Behalf Of Pat LaVarre
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 5:46 PM
To: t10 at t10.org
Cc: p.lavarre at ieee.org
Subject: stds-1394: empirical character of SBP2 scatter/gather lists?


 > mailto:stds-1394 at majordomo.ieee.org

Hey, hi, has anyone here already dug into the empirical character of ORBs?

How about in particular the actual content of the theoretically
"unrestricted page table"s to which ORBs point?  I ask because me, glancing
over bus traces, I'm seeing both More and Less variety than I knew to expect
in page tables.

Me, I first learned to spell FireWire about three weeks ago.  Now I'm
looking to connect with less clueless folk, hoping to provoke you to share
your history of pain and thereby shortcut my learning curve.  Me, I'm trying
to make sense of actual bus traces.

I'm wondering how completely I have misunderstood what's going on in how the
popular shipping operating systems actually manage the virtual memory
involved in block i/o?

Me, I had the idea that block i/o involved a length of blocks at a virtual
address.  This virtual memory, once pinned, would appear in physical memory
as a leading fragment of a page, then a series of whole pages, then a
trailing fragment.

Offline two different volunteers told me my summary is none too clear, so
let's try a specific example.  Given a block device that stores x200 (512)
bytes per block and a host that allocates physical memory in chunks of x1000
(4096) bytes each, I thought I might someday see the scatter/gather list for
a physically fragmented, but virtually contiguous, region of memory look
something like:

         for a total of ,........... x3400 bytes

         from address x1234:5FFF for x0001 bytes
         from address x6789:A000 for x1000 bytes
         from address xBCDE:F000 for x2000 bytes
         from address x0123:4000 for x03FF bytes

A scatter/gather list like this has LOS of structure.

All but the first fragment begins at a x1000-byte boundary.  All but the
last fragment ends at a x1000-byte boundary.  The byte length of any middle
fragment is a multiple of x1000.  The sum of the lengths of the first and
last fragments is a multiple of x200 bytes.  Like I said, LOTS of structure.

But the scatter/gather lists (aka "unrestricted page table"s) that I see in
actual bus traces of 1394 sbp2 traffic have both less and more structure
than this example.

In particular, I see four surprises ...

1) I see more structure than I expect:

Some hosts seemingly enforce a less than minimal alignment: every starting
"segment_base" address appears as a multiple of x10 and correspondingly
every byte length ends up a multiple of x10.  I imagine somebody out there
is double-buffering.

WHERE in CSR space does the device get to share its opinion of what optimal
double-buffering is?

2) I see less structure than I expect:

I've heard on some hosts the virtual memory page size is x1000 bytes (4KB).
Indisputably (log2(x1000) - 8) is 4.  But the "page_size" fields of the
ORB's I see isn't 4: it is 0.  Somebody out there wants to say I'll be
seeing "unrestricted page table"s?

WHY favour "unrestricted page table"s?

WHERE in CSR space does the device get to express its preference for
restricted page tables?

3) Less structure than I expect:

Smack in the middle of an sbp2 page table, on occasion, I see
"segment_length"s that are not multiples of x1000.

HOW can an app make that happen?

4) Less structure than I expect:

I see a variety of "max_payload" values in the ORBs.  I think I understand
the "max_payload" value, if small, can tell the device to subdivide access
of even a single element of a page table.

As the "max_payload" value, mostly I see 7 to 9, where I was expecting to
see xA i.e. (log2(x1000) - 2).

 > mailto:sbp3 at isg.apple.com

Please tell me if I'd do better to ask there, rather than here
(t10 at t10.org).

Thanks in advance.    PatLaVarre 

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