PipeWire: DMA-BUF sharing

PipeWire 0.3.51

DMA-BUF sharing

PipeWire supports sharing Direct Memory Access buffers (DMA-BUFs) between clients via the `SPA_DATA_DmaBuf` data type.

However properly negotiating DMA-BUF support on both the producer and the consumer side require following a specific procedure. This page describes said procedure by using events and methods from the filter or stream API. Note: This article focuses mostly on DMA-BUF sharing from arbitrary devices, like discrete GPUs. For using DMA-BUFs created by v4l2 please refer to the corresponding paragraph.

# Capability negotiations

The capability negotiation for DMA-BUFs is complicated by the fact, that a usable and preferred optimal modifier for a given format can only be determined by the allocator, which has to be invoked with the intersection of all supported modifiers of all clients. As a result the fixation of the modifier has to be delegated from PipeWire to the node responsible for allocating the buffers.

## pw_stream_connect

The stream parameters should contain two `SPA_PARAM_EnumFormat` objects for each format: the first one is used for DMA-BUFs, the second one for shared memory buffers as a fallback.

Query the list of all supported modifiers from your graphics API of choice. Add a `SPA_FORMAT_VIDEO_modifier` property to the first stream parameter with the flags `SPA_POD_PROP_FLAG_MANDATORY | SPA_POD_PROP_FLAG_DONT_FIXATE`. The value of the property should be set to a `SPA_CHOICE_Enum` containing one `long` choice per supported modifier, plus `DRM_FORMAT_MOD_INVALID` if the graphics API supports modifier-less buffers.

Note: When a producer is only supporting modifier-less buffers it can omit the `SPA_POD_PROP_FLAG_DONT_FIXATE` (see param_changed hook, For producers).

The second stream parameter should not contain any `SPA_FORMAT_VIDEO_modifier` property.

To prioritise DMA-BUFs place those `SPA_PARAM_EnumFormat` containing modifiers first, when emitting them to PipeWire.

## param_changed hook

When the `param_changed` hook is called for a `SPA_PARAM_Format` the client has to parse the `spa_pod` directly. Use `spa_pod_find_prop(param, NULL, SPA_FORMAT_VIDEO_modifier)` to check whether modifiers were negotiated. If they were negotiated, set the `SPA_PARAM_BUFFERS_dataType` property to `1 << SPA_DATA_DmaBuf`. If they were not negotiated, fall back to shared memory by setting the `SPA_PARAM_BUFFERS_dataType` property to `1 << SPA_DATA_MemFd`, `1 << SPA_DATA_MemPtr`, or both.

While consumers only have to parse the resulting `SPA_PARAM_Format` for any format related information, it's up to the producer to fixate onto a single format modifier pair. The producer is also responsible to check if all clients announce sufficient capabilities or fallback to shared memory buffers when possible.

### For consumers

Use `spa_format_video_raw_parse` to get the format and modifier.

### For producers

Producers have to handle two cases when it comes to modifiers wrt. to the previous announced capabilities: Using only the modifier-less API, only the modifier aware one, or supporting both.

- modifier-less: In this case only the modifier `DRM_FORMAT_MOD_INVALID` was announced with the format. It is sufficient to check if the `SPA_PARAM_Format` contains the modifier property as described above. Is that the case use DMA-BUFs for screen-sharing, else fall back to SHM, if possible.
- modifier-aware: In this case a list with all supported modifiers will be returned in the format. (using `DRM_FORMAT_MOD_INVALID` as the token for the modifier-less API). On the `param_changed` event check if the modifier key is present and has the flag `SPA_POD_PROP_FLAG_DONT_FIXATE`. attached to it. In this case extract all modifiers from the list and do a test allocation with your allocator to choose the preferred modifier. Fixate on that `EnumFormat` by announcing a `SPA_PARAM_EnumFormat` with only one modifier in the `SPA_CHOICE_Enum` and without the `SPA_POD_PROP_FLAG_DONT_FIXATE` flag, followed by the previous announced `EnumFormat`s. This will retrigger the `param_changed` event with an `SPA_PARAM_Format` as described below. If the `SPA_PARAM_Format` contains a modifier key, without the flag `SPA_POD_PROP_FLAG_DONT_FIXATE`, it should only contain one value in the `SPA_CHOICE_Enum`. In this case announce the `SPA_PARAM_Buffers` accordingly to the selected format and modifier. It is important to query the plane count of the used format modifier pair and set `SPA_PARAM_BUFFERS_blocks` accordingly.

Note: When test allocating a buffer, collect all possible modifiers, while omitting `DRM_FORMAT_MOD_INVALID` from the `SPA_FORMAT_VIDEO_modifier` property and pass them all to the graphics API. If the allocation fails and the list of possible modifiers contains `DRM_FORMAT_MOD_INVALID`, fall back to allocating without an explicit modifier if the graphics API allows it.

## add_buffer hook

This is relevant for producers.

Allocate a DMA-BUF only using the negotiated format and modifier.

## on_event hook

This is relevant for consumers.

Check the type of the dequeued buffer. If its `SPA_DATA_MemFd` or `SPA_DATA_MemPtr` use the fallback SHM import mechanism. If it's `SPA_DATA_DmaBuf`: Get the DMA-BUF FDs (the plane count is encoded in the `n_datas` variable of the `spa_buffer` struct) and import them with the graphics API.

Note: Some graphics APIs have separated functions for the modifier-less case (`DRM_FORMAT_MOD_INVALID`) or are omitting the modifier, since it might be used for error handling.

## Example programs

- video-src-fixate.c: Fixating negotiated modifiers.
- video-play-fixate.c: Video input stream using pw_stream, with format fixation.

# DMA-BUF mapping warning

It's important to make sure all consumers of the PipeWire stream are prepared to deal with DMA-BUFs. Most DMA-BUFs cannot be treated like shared memory in general because of the following issues:

- DMA-BUFs can use hardware-specific tiling and compression as described by modifiers. Thus, a `mmap(3)` on the DMA-BUF FD will not give a linear view of the buffer contents.
- DMA-BUFs need to be properly synchronized with the asynchronous reads and writes of the hardware. A `mmap(3)` call is not enough to guarantee proper synchronization. (Maybe add link to linux syscall doc??)
- Blindly accessing the DMA-BUFs via `mmap(3)` can be extremely slow if the buffer has been allocated on discrete hardware. Consumers are better off using a proper graphics API (such as EGL, Vulkan or VA-API) to process the DMA-BUFs.

# Size of DMA-BUFs

When importing a DMA-BUF with a proper graphics API the size of a single buffer plane is no relevant property since it will be derived by the driver from the other properties. Therefore consumers should ignore the field `maxsize` of a `spa_data` and the field `size` of a `spa_chunk` struct. Producers are allowed to set both to 0. In cases where mapping a single plane is required the size should be obtained locally via the filedescriptor.

# v4l2

Another use case for streaming via DMA-BUFs are exporting a camera feed from v4l2 as DMA-BUFs. Those are located in the main memory where it is possible to mmap them. This should be done as follows: Neither producer nor consumer should announce a modifier, but both should include `1 << SPA_DATA_DmaBuf` in the `SPA_PARAM_BUFFERS_dataType` property. It's the the responsibility of the producer while the `add_buffer` event to choose DMA-BUF as the used buffer type even though no modifier is present, if it can guarantee, that the used buffer is mmapable.

Note: For now v4l2 uses planar buffers without modifiers. This is the reason for this special case.