This patch series introduces dma-buf export support for RDMA/InfiniBand devices, enabling userspace applications to export RDMA PCI-backed memory regions (such as device memory or mlx5 UAR pages) as dma-buf file descriptors.
This allows PCI device memory to be shared with other kernel subsystems (e.g., graphics or media) or between userspace processes, via the standard dma-buf interface, avoiding unnecessary copies and enabling efficient peer-to-peer (P2P) DMA transfers. See [1] for background on dma-buf.
As part of this series, we introduce a new uverbs object of type FD for dma-buf export, along with the corresponding APIs for allocation and teardown. This object encapsulates all attributes required to export a dma-buf.
The implementation enforces P2P-only mappings and properly manages resource lifecycle, including: - Cleanup during driver removal or RDMA context destruction. - Revocation via dma_buf_move_notify() when the underlying mmap entries are removed. - Refactors common cleanup logic for reuse across FD uobject types.
The infrastructure is generic within uverbs, allowing individual drivers to easily integrate and supply their vendor-specific implementation.
The mlx5 driver is the first consumer of this new API, providing: - Initialization of PCI peer-to-peer DMA support. - mlx5-specific implementations of the mmap_get_pfns and pgoff_to_mmap_entry device operations required for dma-buf export.
[1] https://docs.kernel.org/driver-api/dma-buf.html
Signed-off-by: Yishai Hadas yishaih@nvidia.com Signed-off-by: Edward Srouji edwards@nvidia.com --- Changes in v2: - Split the FD uobject refactoring into a separate patch ("RDMA: Add support for exporting dma-buf file descriptors") - Remove redundant revoked check from attach callback. It is checked during map - Add pin callback that returns -EOPNOTSUPP to explicitly refuse pinned importers - Wait for pending fences after dma_buf_move_notify() using dma_resv_wait_timeout() to ensure hardware has completed all in-flight operations before proceeding - Link to v1: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20260108-dmabuf-export-v1-0-6d47d46580d3@nvidia.co...
--- Yishai Hadas (3): RDMA/uverbs: Support external FD uobjects RDMA/uverbs: Add DMABUF object type and operations RDMA/mlx5: Implement DMABUF export ops
drivers/infiniband/core/Makefile | 1 + drivers/infiniband/core/device.c | 2 + drivers/infiniband/core/ib_core_uverbs.c | 22 +++ drivers/infiniband/core/rdma_core.c | 63 ++++---- drivers/infiniband/core/rdma_core.h | 1 + drivers/infiniband/core/uverbs.h | 10 ++ drivers/infiniband/core/uverbs_std_types_dmabuf.c | 176 ++++++++++++++++++++++ drivers/infiniband/core/uverbs_uapi.c | 1 + drivers/infiniband/hw/mlx5/main.c | 72 +++++++++ include/rdma/ib_verbs.h | 9 ++ include/rdma/uverbs_types.h | 1 + include/uapi/rdma/ib_user_ioctl_cmds.h | 10 ++ 12 files changed, 342 insertions(+), 26 deletions(-) --- base-commit: 325e3b5431ddd27c5f93156b36838a351e3b2f72 change-id: 20260108-dmabuf-export-0d598058dd1e
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