DESCRIPTION

This manual page describes the zerocopy interface of RDS, which was added in RDSv3. For a description of the basic RDS interface, please refer to rds(7).

The principal mode of operation for RDS zerocopy is like this: one participant (the client) wishes to initiate a direct transfer to or from some area of memory in its process address space. This memory does not have to be aligned.

The client obtains a handle for this region of memory, and passes it to the other participant (the server). This is called the RDMA cookie. To the application, the cookie is an opaque 64bit data type.

The client sends this handle to the server application, along with other details of the RDMA request (such as which data to transfer to that memory area). Throughout the following discussion, we will refer to this message as the RDMA request.

The server uses this RDMA cookie to initiate the requested RDMA transfer. The RDMA transfer is combined atomically with a normal RDS message, which is delivered to the client. This message is called the RDMA ACK throughout the following. Atomic in this context means that either both the RDMA succeeds and the RDMA ACK is delivered, or neither succeeds.

Thus, when the client receives the RDMA ACK, it knows that the RDMA has completed successfully. It can then release the RDMA cookie for this memory region, if it wishes to.

RDMA operations are not reliable, in the sense that unlike normal RDS messages, RDS RDMA operations may fail, and get dropped.

INTERFACE

The interface is currently based on control messages (ancillary data) sent or received via the sendmsg(2) and recvmsg(2) system calls. Optionally, an older interface can be used that is based on the setsockopt(2) system call. However, we recommend using control messages, as this reduces the number of system calls required.

Control message interface

With the control message interface, the RDMA cookie is passed to the server out-of-band, included in an extension header attached to the RDS message.

The following outlines the mode of operation; the data types used will be specified in details in a subsequent section.

Initially, the client will send RDMA requests along with a RDS_CMSG_RDMA_MAP control message. The control message contains the address and length of the memory region for which to obtain a handle, some flags, and a pointer to a memory location (in the caller's address space) where the kernel will store the RDMA cookie.

Alternatively, if the application has already obtained a RDMA cookie for the memory range it wants to RDMA to/from, it can hand this cookie to the kernel using the RDS_CMSG_RDMA_DEST control message.

Either way, the kernel will include the resulting RDMA cookie in an extension header that is transmitted as part of the RDMA request to the server.

When the server receives the RDMA request, the kernel will deliver the cookie wrapped inside a RDS_CMSG_RDMA_DEST control message.

The server then initiates the data transfer by sending the RDMA ACK message along with a RDS_CMSG_RDMA_ARGS control message. This message contains the RDMA cookie, and the local memory to copy to or from.

The server process may request a notification when an RDMA operation completes. Notifications are delivered as a RDS_CMSG_RDMA_STATUS control messages. When an application calls recvmsg(2), it will either receive a regular RDS message (possibly with other RDMA related control messages), or an empty message with one or more status control messages.

In addition, applications When an RDMA operation fails for some reason and is discarded, the application can ask to receive notifications for failed messages as well, regardless of whether it asked for success notification of an individual message or not. This behavior is turned on by setting the RDS_RECVERR socket option.

Setsockopt interface

In addition to the control message interface, RDS allows a process to register and release memory ranges for RDMA through calls to setsockopt(2).

RDS_GET_MR

To obtain a RDMA cookie for a given memory range, the application can use setsockopt with RDS_GET_MR. This operates essentially the same way as the RDS_CMSG_RDMA_MAP control message: the argument contains the address and length of the memory range to be registered, and a pointer to a RDMA cookie variable, in which the system call will store the cookie for the registered range.

RDS_FREE_MR

Memory ranges can be released by calling setsockopt with RDS_FREE_MR, giving the RDMA cookie and additional flags as arguments.

RDS_RECVERR

This is a boolean option which can be set as well as queried (using getsockopt). When enabled, RDS will send RDMA notification messages to the application for any RDMA operation that fails. This option defaults to off.

For all of these calls, the level argument to setsockopt is SOL_RDS.

RDMA MACROS AND TYPES

RDMA cookie

typedef u_int64_t       rds_rdma_cookie_t

This encapsulates a memory location in the client process. In the current implementation, it contains the R_Key of the remote memory region, and the offset into it (so that the application does not have to worry about alignment.

The RDMA cookie is used in several struct types described below. The RDS_CMSG_RDMA_DEST control message contains a rds_rdma_cookie_t all by itself as payload.

Mapping arguments

The following data type is used with RDS_CMSG_RDMA_MAP control messages and with the RDS_GET_MR socket option:

struct rds_iovec {
        u_int64_t       addr;
        u_int64_t       bytes;
};
struct rds_get_mr_args {
        struct rds_iovec vec;
        u_int64_t       cookie_addr;
        uint64_t        flags;
};

The cookie_addr specifies a memory location where to store the RDMA cookie.

The flags value is a bitwise OR of any of the following flags:

RDS_RDMA_USE_ONCE

This tells the kernel that the allocated RDMA cookie is to be used exactly once. When the RDMA ACK message arrives, the kernel will automatically unbind the memory area and release any resources associated with the cookie.

If this flag is not set, it is the application's responsibility to release the memory region at a later time using the RDS_FREE_MR socket option.

RDS_RDMA_INVALIDATE

Normally, RDMA memory mappings are invalidated lazily, as this requires some relatively costly synchronization with the HCA. However, this means that the server application can continue to access the registered memory for some indeterminate amount of time. If this flag is set, the RDS code will invalidate the mapping at the time it is released (either upon arrival of the RDMA ACK, if USE_ONCE was specified; or when the application destroys it using FREE_MR).

RDMA Operation

RDMA operations are initiated by the server using the RDS_CMSG_RDMA_ARGS control message, which takes the following data as payload:

struct rds_rdma_args {
        rds_rdma_cookie_t cookie;
        struct rds_iovec remote_vec;
        u_int64_t       local_vec_addr;
        u_int64_t       nr_local;
        u_int64_t       flags;
        u_int32_t       user_token;
};

The cookie argument contains the RDMA cookie received from the client. The local memory is given via an array of rds_iovecs. The array address is given in local_vec_addr, and its number of elements is given in nr_local.

The struct member remote_vec specifies a location relative to the memory area identified by the cookie: remote_vec.addr is an offset into that region, and remote_vec.bytes is the length of the memory window to copy to/from. This length must match the size of the local memory area, i.e. the sum of bytes in all members of the local iovec.

The flags field contains the bitwise OR of any of the following flags:

RDS_RDMA_READWRITE

If set, any RDMA WRITE is initiated from the server's memory to the client's. If not set, RDS will do a RDMA READ from the client's memory to the server's memory.

RDS_RDMA_FENCE

By default, Infiniband makes no guarantee about the ordering of an RDMA READ with respect to subsequent SEND operations. Setting this flag asks that the RDMA READ should be fenced off the subsequent RDS ACK message. Setting this flag requires an additional round-trip of the IB fabric, but it is a good idea to use set this flag by default, unless you are really sure you do not want it.

RDS_RDMA_NOTIFY_ME

This flag requests a notification upon completion of the RDMA operation (successful or otherwise). The noticiation will contain the value of the user_token field passed in by the application. This allows the application to release resources (such as buffers) assosicated with the RDMA transfer.

The user_token can be used to pass an application specific identifier to the kernel. This token is returned to the application when a status notification is generated (see the following section).

RDMA Notification

The RDS kernel code is able to notify the server application when an RDMA operation completes. These notifications are delivered via RDS_CMSG_RDMA_STATUS control messages.

By default, no notifications are generated. There are two ways an application can request them. On one hand, status notifications can be enabled on a per-operation basis by setting the RDS_RDMA_NOTIFY_ME flag in the RDMA arguments. On the other hand, the application can request notifications for all RDMA operations that fail by setting the RDS_RECVERR socket option (see below). In both cases, the format of the notification is the same; and at most one notification will be sent per completed operation.

The message format is this:

struct rds_rdma_notify {
        u_int32_t       user_token;
        int32_t         status;
};

The user_token field contains the value previously given to the kernel in the RDS_CMSG_RDMA_ARGS control message. The status field contains a status value, with 0 indicating success, and non-zero indicating an error.

The following status codes are currently defined:

RDS_RDMA_SUCCESS

The RDMA operation succeeded.

RDS_RDMA_REMOTE_ERROR

The RDMA operation failed due to a remote access error. This is usually due to an invalid R_key, offset or transfer size.

RDS_RDMA_CANCELED

The RDMA operation was canceled by the application. (This error code is not yet generated).

RDS_RDMA_DROPPED

RDMA operations were discarded after the connection broke and was re-established. The RDMA operation may have been processed partially.

RDS_RDMA_OTHER_ERROR

Any other failure.

RDMA setsockopt arguments

When using the RDS_GET_MR socket option to register a memory range, the application passes a pointer to a struct rds_get_mr_args variable, described above.

The RDS_FREE_MR call takes an argument of type struct rds_free_mr_args:

struct rds_free_mr_args {
        rds_rdma_cookie_t cookie;
        u_int64_t       flags;
};

cookie specifies the RDMA cookie to be released. RDMA access to the memory range will usually not be invoked instantly, because the operation is rather costly. However, if the flags argument contains RDS_RDMA_INVALIDATE, RDS will invalidate the indicated mapping immediately, as described in section Mapping arguments above.

If the cookie argument is 0, and RDS_RDMA_INVALIDATE is set, RDS will invalidate old memory mappings on all devices.

LIMITS

Currently, the following limits apply

• The maximum size of a zerocopy transfer is 1MB. This can be adjusted via the fmr_message_size module parameter.
• The maximum number of memory ranges that can be mapped is limited to 2048 at the moment. This can be adjusted via the fmr_pool_size module parameter. However, the actual limit imposed by the hardware may in fact be lower.

AUTHORS

RDS was written and is Copyright (C) 2007-2008 by Oracle, Inc.