Re: [Xen-devel] [alsa-devel] [PATCH 08/11] ALSA: vsnd: Add timer for period interrupt emulation
On 08/07/2017 06:14 PM, Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote: On 08/07/2017 04:55 PM, Clemens Ladisch wrote: Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote: On 08/07/2017 04:11 PM, Clemens Ladisch wrote: How does that interface work? For the buffer received in .copy_user/.copy_kernel we send a request to the backend and get response back (async) when it has copied the bytes into HW/mixer/etc, so the buffer at frontend side can be reused. So if the frontend sends too many (too large) requests, does the backend wait until there is enough free space in the buffer before it does the actual copying and then acks? Well, the frontend should be backend agnostic, In our implementation backend is a user-space application which sits either on top of ALSA driver or PulseAudio: so, it acks correspondingly, e.g, when, for example, ALSA driver completes .copy_user and returns from the kernel If yes, then these acks can be used as interrupts. we can probably teach our backend to track periods elapsed for ALSA, but not sure if it is possible for PulseAudio - do you know if this is also doable for pulse? Let's assume backend blocks until the buffer played/consumed... (You still have to count frames, and call snd_pcm_period_elapsed() exactly when a period boundary was reached or crossed.) ... and what if the buffer has multiple periods? So, that the backend sends a single response for multiple periods (buffers with fractional period number can be handled separately)? We will have to either send snd_pcm_period_elapsed once (wrong, because multiple periods consumed) or multiple times at one time with no delay (wrong, because there will be a confusion that multiple periods were not reported for quite some long time and then there is a burst of events) Either way the behavior will not be the one desired (please correct me if I am wrong here) Splitting a large read/write into smaller requests to the backend would improve the granularity of the known stream position. The overall latency would be the sum of the sizes of the frontend and backend buffers. Why is the protocol designed this way? We also work on para-virtualizing display device and there we tried to use page flip events from backend to frontend to signal similar to period interrupt for audio. When multiple displays (read multiple audio streams) were in place we flooded with the system interrupts (which are period events in our case) and performance dropped significantly. This is why we switched to interrupt emulation, here via timer for audio. The main measures were: 1. Number of events between front and back 2. Latency With timer approach we reduce 1) to the minimum which is a must (no period interrupts), but 2) is still here With emulated period interrupts (protocol events) we have issue with 1) and still 2) remains. BTW, there is one more approach to solve this [1], but it uses its own Xen sound protocol and heavily relies on Linux implementation, which cannot be a part of a generic protocol So, to me, neither approach solves the problem for 100%, so we decided to stick to timers. Hope, this gives more background on why we did things the way we did. Wasn't the goal to expose some 'real' sound card? yes, but it can be implemented in different ways, please see above Regards, Clemens Thank you for your interest, Oleksandr [1] https://github.com/OpenXT/pv-linux-drivers/blob/master/archive/openxt-audio/main.c#L356 ___ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.xen.org https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel
Re: [Xen-devel] [alsa-devel] [PATCH 08/11] ALSA: vsnd: Add timer for period interrupt emulation
On 08/07/2017 04:55 PM, Clemens Ladisch wrote: Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote: On 08/07/2017 04:11 PM, Clemens Ladisch wrote: How does that interface work? For the buffer received in .copy_user/.copy_kernel we send a request to the backend and get response back (async) when it has copied the bytes into HW/mixer/etc, so the buffer at frontend side can be reused. So if the frontend sends too many (too large) requests, does the backend wait until there is enough free space in the buffer before it does the actual copying and then acks? Well, the frontend should be backend agnostic, In our implementation backend is a user-space application which sits either on top of ALSA driver or PulseAudio: so, it acks correspondingly, e.g, when, for example, ALSA driver completes .copy_user and returns from the kernel If yes, then these acks can be used as interrupts. we can probably teach our backend to track periods elapsed for ALSA, but not sure if it is possible for PulseAudio - do you know if this is also doable for pulse? Let's assume backend blocks until the buffer played/consumed... (You still have to count frames, and call snd_pcm_period_elapsed() exactly when a period boundary was reached or crossed.) ... and what if the buffer has multiple periods? So, that the backend sends a single response for multiple periods (buffers with fractional period number can be handled separately)? We will have to either send snd_pcm_period_elapsed once (wrong, because multiple periods consumed) or multiple times at one time with no delay (wrong, because there will be a confusion that multiple periods were not reported for quite some long time and then there is a burst of events) Either way the behavior will not be the one desired (please correct me if I am wrong here) Splitting a large read/write into smaller requests to the backend would improve the granularity of the known stream position. The overall latency would be the sum of the sizes of the frontend and backend buffers. Why is the protocol designed this way? We also work on para-virtualizing display device and there we tried to use page flip events from backend to frontend to signal similar to period interrupt for audio. When multiple displays (read multiple audio streams) were in place we flooded with the system interrupts (which are period events in our case) and performance dropped significantly. This is why we switched to interrupt emulation, here via timer for audio. The main measures were: 1. Number of events between front and back 2. Latency With timer approach we reduce 1) to the minimum which is a must (no period interrupts), but 2) is still here With emulated period interrupts (protocol events) we have issue with 1) and still 2) remains. So, to me, neither approach solves the problem for 100%, so we decided to stick to timers. Hope, this gives more background on why we did things the way we did. Wasn't the goal to expose some 'real' sound card? yes, but it can be implemented in different ways, please see above Regards, Clemens Thank you for your interest, Oleksandr ___ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.xen.org https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel
Re: [Xen-devel] [alsa-devel] [PATCH 08/11] ALSA: vsnd: Add timer for period interrupt emulation
Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote: > On 08/07/2017 04:11 PM, Clemens Ladisch wrote: >> How does that interface work? > > For the buffer received in .copy_user/.copy_kernel we send > a request to the backend and get response back (async) when it has copied > the bytes into HW/mixer/etc, so the buffer at frontend side can be reused. So if the frontend sends too many (too large) requests, does the backend wait until there is enough free space in the buffer before it does the actual copying and then acks? If yes, then these acks can be used as interrupts. (You still have to count frames, and call snd_pcm_period_elapsed() exactly when a period boundary was reached or crossed.) Splitting a large read/write into smaller requests to the backend would improve the granularity of the known stream position. The overall latency would be the sum of the sizes of the frontend and backend buffers. Why is the protocol designed this way? Wasn't the goal to expose some 'real' sound card? Regards, Clemens ___ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.xen.org https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel
Re: [Xen-devel] [alsa-devel] [PATCH 08/11] ALSA: vsnd: Add timer for period interrupt emulation
On 08/07/2017 04:11 PM, Clemens Ladisch wrote: Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote: On 08/07/2017 01:27 PM, Clemens Ladisch wrote: You have to implement period interrupts (and the .pointer callback) based on when the samples are actually moved from/to the backend. Do you think I can implement this in a slightly different way, without a timer at all, by updating substream->runtime->hw_ptr_base explicitly in the frontend driver? As far as I am aware, hw_ptr_base is an internal field that drivers are not supposed to change. I know that and always considered not a good solution, this is why I have timer to emulate things Just use your own variable, and return it from the .pointer callback. this can work, but see below So, that way, whenever I get an ack/response from the backend that it has successfully played the buffer That response should come after every period. How does that interface work? For the buffer received in .copy_user/.copy_kernel we send a request to the backend and get response back (async) when it has copied the bytes into HW/mixer/etc, so the buffer at frontend side can be reused. So, the amount of bytes in this exchange is not necessarily a multiply of the period. Also, there is no way to synchronize period sizes in the front driver and backend to make those equal. There is also no event from the backend in the protocol to tell that the period has elapsed, so sending data in period's size buffers will not probably help because of possible underruns Is it possible to change the period size, or at least to detect what it is? Unfortunately no, this is not in the protocol. Regards, Clemens you can see the protocol at [1] Thank you, Oleksandr [1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tiwai/sound.git/tree/include/xen/interface/io/sndif.h?h=for-next ___ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.xen.org https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel
Re: [Xen-devel] [alsa-devel] [PATCH 08/11] ALSA: vsnd: Add timer for period interrupt emulation
Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote: > On 08/07/2017 01:27 PM, Clemens Ladisch wrote: >> You have to implement period interrupts (and the .pointer callback) >> based on when the samples are actually moved from/to the backend. > > Do you think I can implement this in a slightly different way, > without a timer at all, by updating > substream->runtime->hw_ptr_base explicitly in the frontend driver? As far as I am aware, hw_ptr_base is an internal field that drivers are not supposed to change. Just use your own variable, and return it from the .pointer callback. > So, that way, whenever I get an ack/response from the backend that it has > successfully played the buffer That response should come after every period. How does that interface work? Is it possible to change the period size, or at least to detect what it is? Regards, Clemens ___ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.xen.org https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel
Re: [Xen-devel] [alsa-devel] [PATCH 08/11] ALSA: vsnd: Add timer for period interrupt emulation
Hi, Clemens! On 08/07/2017 01:27 PM, Clemens Ladisch wrote: Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote: Front sound driver has no real interrupts, so playback/capture period passed interrupt needs to be emulated: this is done via timer. Add required timer operations, this is based on sound/drivers/dummy.c. A 'real' sound card use the interrupt to synchronize the stream position between the hardware and the driver. The hardware triggers an interrupt immediately after a period has been completely read (for playback) from the ring buffer by the DMA unit; this tells the driver that it is now again allowed to write to that part of the buffer. Yes, I know that, thank you The dummy driver has no hardware that accesses the buffer, so the period interrupts are not synchronized to anything. Exactly This is not a suitable implementation when the samples are actually used. If you issue interrupts based on the system timer, the position reported by the .pointer callback and the position where the hardware (backend) actually accesses the buffer will diverge, which will eventually corrupt data. Makes sense, but in my case the buffer from the frontend is copied into backend's memory, so they don't share the same buffer as real HW does. But it is still possible that the new portion of data may arrive and backend will overwrite the memory which hasn't been played yet because pointers are not synchronized You have to implement period interrupts (and the .pointer callback) based on when the samples are actually moved from/to the backend. Do you think I can implement this in a slightly different way, without a timer at all, by updating substream->runtime->hw_ptr_base explicitly in the frontend driver? Like it was implemented [1], see virtualcard_pcm_pointer (unfortunately, that driver didn't make it to the kernel). So, that way, whenever I get an ack/response from the backend that it has successfully played the buffer I can update hw_ptr_base at the frontend and thus be always in sync to the backend. Regards, Clemens Thank you, Oleksandr [1] http://marc.info/?l=xen-devel=142185395013970=4 ___ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.xen.org https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel
Re: [Xen-devel] [alsa-devel] [PATCH 08/11] ALSA: vsnd: Add timer for period interrupt emulation
Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote: > Front sound driver has no real interrupts, so > playback/capture period passed interrupt needs to be emulated: > this is done via timer. Add required timer operations, > this is based on sound/drivers/dummy.c. A 'real' sound card use the interrupt to synchronize the stream position between the hardware and the driver. The hardware triggers an interrupt immediately after a period has been completely read (for playback) from the ring buffer by the DMA unit; this tells the driver that it is now again allowed to write to that part of the buffer. The dummy driver has no hardware that accesses the buffer, so the period interrupts are not synchronized to anything. This is not a suitable implementation when the samples are actually used. If you issue interrupts based on the system timer, the position reported by the .pointer callback and the position where the hardware (backend) actually accesses the buffer will diverge, which will eventually corrupt data. You have to implement period interrupts (and the .pointer callback) based on when the samples are actually moved from/to the backend. Regards, Clemens ___ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.xen.org https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel
