On Thu, Apr 25, 2024 at 01:04:31PM +0300, Manos Pitsidianakis wrote: > On Thu, 25 Apr 2024 at 10:49, Mark Cave-Ayland > <mark.cave-ayl...@ilande.co.uk> wrote: > > > > On 25/04/2024 07:30, Manos Pitsidianakis wrote: > > > > > On Wed, 24 Apr 2024 at 13:31, Mark Cave-Ayland > > > <mark.cave-ayl...@ilande.co.uk> wrote: > > >> > > >> On 23/04/2024 12:05, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote: > > >> > > >>> On 23/4/24 11:18, Manos Pitsidianakis wrote: > > >>>> On Tue, 23 Apr 2024 at 11:47, Manos Pitsidianakis > > >>>> <manos.pitsidiana...@linaro.org> wrote: > > >>>>> > > >>>>> On Tue, 23 Apr 2024 at 00:11, Michael S. Tsirkin <m...@redhat.com> > > >>>>> wrote: > > >>>>>> > > >>>>>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 11:07:21PM +0200, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé > > >>>>>> wrote: > > >>>>>>> On 22/4/24 23:02, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote: > > >>>>>>>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 04:20:56PM +0200, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé > > >>>>>>>> wrote: > > >>>>>>>>> Since VirtIO devices can change endianness at runtime, > > >>>>>>>>> we need to use the device endianness, not the target > > >>>>>>>>> one. > > >>>>>>>>> > > >>>>>>>>> Cc: qemu-sta...@nongnu.org > > >>>>>>>>> Fixes: eb9ad377bb ("virtio-sound: handle control messages and > > >>>>>>>>> streams") > > >>>>>>>>> Signed-off-by: Philippe Mathieu-Daudé <phi...@linaro.org> > > >>>>>>>> > > >>>>>>>> > > >>>>>>>> > > >>>>>>>> This is all completely bogus. Virtio SND is from Virtio 1.0 only. > > >>>>>>>> It is unconditionally little endian. > > >>>>> > > >>>>> > > >>>>> This part of the code is for PCM frames (raw bytes), not virtio spec > > >>>>> fields (which indeed must be LE in modern VIRTIO). > > >>>> > > >>>> Thought a little more about it. We should keep the target's endianness > > >>>> here, if it's mutable then we should query the machine the device is > > >>>> attached to somehow. the virtio device should never change endianness > > >>>> like Michael says since it's not legacy. > > >>> > > >>> Grr. So as Richard suggested, this need to be pass as a device > > >>> property then. > > >>> (https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/ed134c9d-6e6f-465b-900f-e39ca4e09...@linaro.org/) > > >> > > >> It feels to me that the endianness is something that should be > > >> negotiated as part of > > >> the frame format, since the endianness of the audio hardware can be > > >> different from > > >> that of the CPU (think PReP machines where it was common that a big > > >> endian CPU is > > >> driving little endian hardware as found on x86). > > > > > > But that is the job of the hardware drivers, isn't it? Here we are > > > taking frames passed from the guest to its virtio driver in the format > > > specified in the target cpu's endianness and QEMU as the device passes > > > it to host ALSA/Pipewire/etc which in turn passes it to the actual > > > audio hardware driver.. > > > > The problem is that the notion of target CPU endian is not fixed. For > > example the > > PowerPC CPU starts off in big-endian mode, but these days most systems will > > switch > > the CPU to little-endian mode on startup to run ppc64le. There's also the > > ILE bit > > which can be configured so that a big-endian PowerPC CPU can dynamically > > switch to > > little-endian mode when processing an interrupt, so you could potentially > > end up with > > either depending upon the current mode of the CPU. > > > > These are the kinds of issues that led to the later virtio specifications > > simply > > using little-endian for everything, since then there is zero ambiguity over > > what > > endian is required for the virtio configuration space accesses. > > > > It feels to me that assuming a target CPU endian is fixed for the PCM frame > > formats > > is simply repeating the mistakes of the past - and even the fact that we are > > discussing this within this thread suggests that at a very minimum the > > virtio-snd > > specification needs to be updated to clarify the byte ordering of the PCM > > frame formats. > > > > > > ATB, > > > > Mark. > > > > > Agreed, I think we are saying approximately the same thing here. > > We need a mechanism to retrieve the vCPUs endianness and a way to > notify subscribed devices when it changes.
I don't think I agree, it's not the same thing. Guest should just convert and send data in LE format. Host should then convert from LE format. Target endian-ness does not come into it. > I think that then, since the virtio device is mostly certain of the > correct target endianness and completely certain of the host > endianness, it can perform the necessary conversions. > > I don't recall seeing a restriction on the byte ordering of PCM > formats other than the CPU order; except for the ones which have > explicit endianness in their definitions. Please correct me if I am > wrong! > > A straightforward solution would be to set an endianness change notify > callback in DeviceClass. What do you think? > > -- > Manos Pitsidianakis > Emulation and Virtualization Engineer at Linaro Ltd