Re: [PATCH v8 2/3] vfio/ism: Implement vfio_pci driver for ISM devices

[Niklas Schnelle]

On Wed, 2026-03-25 at 14:31 +0100, Julian Ruess wrote:
> Add a vfio_pci variant driver for the s390-specific Internal Shared
> Memory (ISM) devices used for inter-VM communication.
> 
> This enables the development of vfio-pci-based user space drivers for
> ISM devices.
> 
> On s390, kernel primitives such as ioread() and iowrite() are switched
> over from function-handle-based PCI load/stores instructions to PCI
> memory-I/O (MIO) loads/stores when these are available and not
> explicitly disabled. Since these instructions cannot be used with ISM
> devices, ensure that classic function-handle-based PCI instructions are
> used instead.
> 
> The driver is still required even when MIO instructions are disabled, as
> the ISM device relies on the PCI store block (PCISTB) instruction to
> perform write operations.
> 
> Stores are not fragmented, therefore one ioctl corresponds to exactly
> one PCISTB instruction. User space must ensure to not write more than
> 4096 bytes at once to an ISM BAR which is the maximum payload of the
> PCISTB instruction.
> 
> Reviewed-by: Alexandra Winter <wintera@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Reviewed-by: Niklas Schnelle <schnelle@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Julian Ruess <julianr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  drivers/vfio/pci/Kconfig      |   2 +
>  drivers/vfio/pci/Makefile     |   2 +
>  drivers/vfio/pci/ism/Kconfig  |  10 ++
>  drivers/vfio/pci/ism/Makefile |   3 +
>  drivers/vfio/pci/ism/main.c   | 408 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  5 files changed, 425 insertions(+)
> 
--- snip ---
> +
> +static int ism_vfio_pci_ioctl_get_region_info(struct vfio_device *core_vdev,
> +					      struct vfio_region_info *info,
> +					      struct vfio_info_cap *caps)
> +{
> +	struct vfio_pci_core_device *vdev =
> +		container_of(core_vdev, struct vfio_pci_core_device, vdev);
> +	struct pci_dev *pdev = vdev->pdev;
> +
> +	switch (info->index) {
> +	case VFIO_PCI_CONFIG_REGION_INDEX:
> +		info->offset = ISM_VFIO_PCI_INDEX_TO_OFFSET(info->index);
> +		info->size = pdev->cfg_size;
> +		info->flags = VFIO_REGION_INFO_FLAG_READ |
> +			      VFIO_REGION_INFO_FLAG_WRITE;
> +		break;
> +	case VFIO_PCI_BAR0_REGION_INDEX ... VFIO_PCI_BAR5_REGION_INDEX:
> +		info->offset = ISM_VFIO_PCI_INDEX_TO_OFFSET(info->index);
> +		info->size = pci_resource_len(pdev, info->index);
> +		if (!info->size) {
> +			info->flags = 0;
> +			break;
> +		}
> +		info->flags = VFIO_REGION_INFO_FLAG_READ |
> +			      VFIO_REGION_INFO_FLAG_WRITE;
> +		break;
> +	default:
> +		info->offset = 0;
> +		info->size = 0;
> +		info->flags = 0;
> +		return -EINVAL;

Thinking more about this, the above default handling actually breaks
additional regions such as the one added by Farhan for the error
events. I think this needs to instead call the generic
vfio_pci_ioctl_get_region_info() for other regions.

> +	}
> +	return 0;
> +}
--- snip ---