diff --git a/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c b/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c
index e12e385f7ac3507e60a3c77b0ff1b25a3c168b26..ab0be6c084f60c540fdbf580d0d0aaa60ba9dbe1 100644
--- a/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c
+++ b/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c
@@ -104,6 +104,30 @@ struct vring_virtqueue {
 
 #define to_vvq(_vq) container_of(_vq, struct vring_virtqueue, vq)
 
+/*
+ * The interaction between virtio and a possible IOMMU is a mess.
+ *
+ * On most systems with virtio, physical addresses match bus addresses,
+ * and it doesn't particularly matter whether we use the DMA API.
+ *
+ * On some systems, including Xen and any system with a physical device
+ * that speaks virtio behind a physical IOMMU, we must use the DMA API
+ * for virtio DMA to work at all.
+ *
+ * On other systems, including SPARC and PPC64, virtio-pci devices are
+ * enumerated as though they are behind an IOMMU, but the virtio host
+ * ignores the IOMMU, so we must either pretend that the IOMMU isn't
+ * there or somehow map everything as the identity.
+ *
+ * For the time being, we preserve historic behavior and bypass the DMA
+ * API.
+ */
+
+static bool vring_use_dma_api(struct virtio_device *vdev)
+{
+	return false;
+}
+
 static struct vring_desc *alloc_indirect(struct virtqueue *_vq,
 					 unsigned int total_sg, gfp_t gfp)
 {