Nouveau - Nov 2025 - [PATCH] gpu: Move DRM buddy allocator one level up

On 11/24/25 11:54 PM, Christian K?nig wrote:
> On 11/25/25 08:49, Dave Airlie wrote:
>> On Tue, 25 Nov 2025 at 17:45, Christian K?nig <christian.koenig at
amd.com> wrote:
...
> My question is why exactly is nova separated into nova-core and nova-drm?
That doesn't seem to be necessary in the first place.
> 
The idea is that nova-core allows building up a separate software stack for
VFIO, without pulling in any DRM-specific code that a hypervisor (for example)
wouldn't need. That makes for a smaller, more security-auditable set of code
for that case.

thanks,
-- 
John Hubbard

On 11/25/25 08:59, John Hubbard wrote:
> On 11/24/25 11:54 PM, Christian K?nig wrote:
>> On 11/25/25 08:49, Dave Airlie wrote:
>>> On Tue, 25 Nov 2025 at 17:45, Christian K?nig <christian.koenig
at amd.com> wrote:
> ...
>> My question is why exactly is nova separated into nova-core and
nova-drm? That doesn't seem to be necessary in the first place.
>>
> The idea is that nova-core allows building up a separate software stack for
> VFIO, without pulling in any DRM-specific code that a hypervisor (for
example)
> wouldn't need. That makes for a smaller, more security-auditable set of
code
> for that case.
Well that is the same argument used by some AMD team to maintain a separate out
of tree hypervisor for nearly a decade.

Additional to that the same argument has also been used to justify the KFD node
as alternative API to DRM for compute.

Both cases have proven to be extremely bad ideas.

Background is that except for all the legacy stuff the DRM API is actually very
well thought through and it is actually quite hard to come up with something
similarly well.

Regards,
Christian. 
> 
> thanks,