本文将mark下hyper_dmabuf相关notes。

Hyper_DMABUF driver is a Linux device driver running on multiple Virtual achines (VMs), which expands DMA-BUF sharing capability to the VM environment where multiple different OS instances need to share same physical data without data-copy across VMs.

To share a DMA_BUF across VMs, an instance of the Hyper_DMABUF drv on the exporting VM (so called, “exporter”) imports a local DMA_BUF from the original producer of the buffer, then re-exports it with an unique ID, hyper_dmabuf_id for the buffer to the importing VM (so called, “importer”).

Another instance of the Hyper_DMABUF driver on importer registers a hyper_dmabuf_id together with reference information for the shared physical pages associated with the DMA_BUF to its database when the export happens.

The actual mapping of the DMA_BUF on the importer’s side is done by the Hyper_DMABUF driver when user space issues the IOCTL command to access the shared DMA_BUF. The Hyper_DMABUF driver works as both an importing and exporting driver as is, that is, no special configuration is required. Consequently, only a single module per VM is needed to enable cross-VM DMA_BUF exchange.

参考资料:

  1. Hyper DMA Buffer Sharing
  2. Linux Hyper DMABUF Driver
  3. hyper_dmabuf: initial working version of hyper_dmabuf drv
  4. Intel Introduces “Hyper DMA-BUF” To Exchange Buffers Between VMs