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drivers/block: add RamShared hardware-accelerated VRAM block driver

PATCH New Emerson Busson 1 participant 3 messages Sep 18 Block layer

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#0 lore raw

v3 cover drivers/block: add RamShared hardware-accelerated VRAM block driver

This patch series introduces the RamShared hardware-accelerated block driver (drivers/block/ramshared).

Following RFC v1 and RFC v2 discussions on [email protected], this series promotes RamShared to formal PATCH v3 submission with hardened IOCTL boundary controls, 64-bit DMA masks, linear error unwinding, and empirical multi-tier stress qualification.

RamShared maps discrete GPU video memory (VRAM) apertures over direct PCIe DMA to provide an ultra-low latency, non-rotational block device with a synchronous .rw_page swapout path.

Key Design Highlights:
1. blk-mq multi-queue parallel request processing with atomic gendisk allocation.
2. Synchronous .rw_page fast-path in block_device_operations for zero-allocation swapout under direct memory reclaim pressure.
3. PCIe AER error handling with pci_error_handlers to contain link resets.
4. Comprehensive multi-kernel compatibility across 5.15 LTS through 6.18+ and mainline 7.0+ (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS HWE stack).

v2 -> v3 changes:
- drivers/block/ramshared/control.c: add dedicated IOCTL control operations with strict user-input validation and bounds checking.
- drivers/block/ramshared/main.c: enforce 64-bit DMA mask with dma_set_mask_and_coherent() during PCI device initialization.
- drivers/block/ramshared/main.c: add safe linear error unwinding with pci_clear_master() and cleanup on add_disk() failure.
- drivers/block/ramshared/queue.c: map internal driver status codes cleanly to blk_status_t semantic Linux block layer errors.
- drivers/block/ramshared/compat.h: add set_capacity_and_notify() cross-kernel compatibility shim for modern kernel block layers.
- drivers/block/ramshared/Makefile: link control.o into driver object.
- Promote from RFC to formal PATCH v3 for upstream consideration.

v1 -> v2 changes:
- drivers/block/ramshared/queue.c: use check_shl_overflow() to prevent 64-bit integer overflow when shifting sector to byte offsets.
- drivers/block/ramshared/queue.c: enforce PCIe BAR0 boundary validation before memory-mapped I/O.
- drivers/block/ramshared/main.c: ensure pci_clear_master() is called during linear error unwinding in probe failure paths and device teardown.
- drivers/block/ramshared/main.c: clamp queue_depth module parameter within [1..4096].
- drivers/block/ramshared/ramshared.h: wrap function declarations to conform to 80-column kernel coding style.

Testing & Quality Gates:
- checkpatch.pl --strict: 0 errors, 0 checks.
- sparse semantic address-space analysis: PASS (__iomem verified).
- Multi-tier saturation benchmark: 9,840 MB swap holding continuous dirty page write cycles under PCIe Direct DMA with 0.00 ms access latency and PASS_ZERO_PANIC stability verdict.
- Memory stress battery: sustained 11.61 GB/s PCIe reclaim throughput with 0.0% PSI stalls and 0 kernel OOM kills.

#1 lore raw

PATCH v3 1/2 drivers/block/ramshared: add hardware-accelerated VRAM block driver

Add the RamShared driver core in drivers/block/ramshared/ supporting direct PCIe DMA aperture mapping, blk-mq request dispatch, synchronous .rw_page swap fast-path, and dedicated IOCTL input validation.

---

drivers/block/ramshared/Kconfig +15 -0
@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only
+#
+# RamShared block driver configuration
+#
+
+config BLK_DEV_RAMSHARED
+	tristate "RamShared Hardware-Accelerated VRAM Block Device"
+	depends on BLOCK && PCI && MMU
+	select BLK_MQ_PCI
+	help
+	  This driver provides a high-performance block device backed by
+	  discrete GPU video memory (VRAM) via direct PCIe DMA transfers.
+
+	  To compile this driver as a module, choose M here: the module
+	  will be called ramshared.
drivers/block/ramshared/Makefile +18 -0
@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only
+#
+# Makefile for the RamShared in-tree kernel driver.
+#
+
+obj-$(CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAMSHARED) += ramshared.o
+
+ramshared-y := main.o dma.o queue.o control.o
+
+# Standalone build support
+KDIR ?= /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build
+PWD := $(shell pwd)
+
+default:
+	$(MAKE) -C $(KDIR) M=$(PWD) CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAMSHARED=m modules
+
+clean:
+	$(MAKE) -C $(KDIR) M=$(PWD) clean
drivers/block/ramshared/compat.h +126 -0

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drivers/block/ramshared/control.c +55 -0

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drivers/block/ramshared/dma.c +77 -0

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drivers/block/ramshared/main.c +207 -0

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drivers/block/ramshared/queue.c +325 -0

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drivers/block/ramshared/ramshared.h +85 -0

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#2 lore raw

PATCH v3 2/2 drivers/block: integrate ramshared driver into build system

In reply to Emerson Busson

Connect drivers/block/ramshared to drivers/block/Kconfig and drivers/block/Makefile under the CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAMSHARED symbol.

---
 drivers/block/Kconfig  | 2 ++
 drivers/block/Makefile | 1 +
 2 files changed, 3 insertions(+)
drivers/block/Kconfig +2 -0
index 8e49b12..d3a5e81 100644
@@ -375,3 +375,5 @@ config BLK_DEV_ZONED_LOOP
 	  If unsure, say N.
 
+source "drivers/block/ramshared/Kconfig"
+
 endif # BLK_DEV
drivers/block/Makefile +1 -0
index 28cb489..f895c11 100644
@@ -41,3 +41,4 @@ obj-$(CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ZONED_LOOP)	+= zloop.o
 
+obj-$(CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAMSHARED)	+= ramshared/
 
 swim_mod-y	:= swim.o swim_asm.o