Re: [PATCH iwl-next v3] e1000e: Fix real-time violations on link up

["Lifshits, Vitaly" <vitaly.lifshits@intel.com>]

On 12/14/2024 9:16 PM, Gerhard Engleder wrote:
> From: Gerhard Engleder <eg@keba.com>
> 
> Link down and up triggers update of MTA table. This update executes many
> PCIe writes and a final flush. Thus, PCIe will be blocked until all
> writes are flushed. As a result, DMA transfers of other targets suffer
> from delay in the range of 50us. This results in timing violations on
> real-time systems during link down and up of e1000e in combination with
> an Intel i3-2310E Sandy Bridge CPU.
> 
> The i3-2310E is quite old. Launched 2011 by Intel but still in use as
> robot controller. The exact root cause of the problem is unclear and
> this situation won't change as Intel support for this CPU has ended
> years ago. Our experience is that the number of posted PCIe writes needs
> to be limited at least for real-time systems. With posted PCIe writes a
> much higher throughput can be generated than with PCIe reads which
> cannot be posted. Thus, the load on the interconnect is much higher.
> Additionally, a PCIe read waits until all posted PCIe writes are done.
> Therefore, the PCIe read can block the CPU for much more than 10us if a
> lot of PCIe writes were posted before. Both issues are the reason why we
> are limiting the number of posted PCIe writes in row in general for our
> real-time systems, not only for this driver.
> 
> A flush after a low enough number of posted PCIe writes eliminates the
> delay but also increases the time needed for MTA table update. The
> following measurements were done on i3-2310E with e1000e for 128 MTA
> table entries:
> 
> Single flush after all writes: 106us
> Flush after every write:       429us
> Flush after every 2nd write:   266us
> Flush after every 4th write:   180us
> Flush after every 8th write:   141us
> Flush after every 16th write:  121us
> 
> A flush after every 8th write delays the link up by 35us and the
> negative impact to DMA transfers of other targets is still tolerable.
> 
> Execute a flush after every 8th write. This prevents overloading the
> interconnect with posted writes.
> 
> Reviewed-by: Przemek Kitszel <przemyslaw.kitszel@intel.com>
> CC: Vitaly Lifshits <vitaly.lifshits@intel.com>
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/f8fe665a-5e6c-4f95-b47a-2f3281aa0e6c@lunn.ch/T/
> Signed-off-by: Gerhard Engleder <eg@keba.com>
> ---
> v3:
> - mention problematic platform explicitly (Bjorn Helgaas)
> - improve comment (Paul Menzel)
> 
> v2:
> - remove PREEMPT_RT dependency (Andrew Lunn, Przemek Kitszel)
> ---
>   drivers/net/ethernet/intel/e1000e/mac.c | 9 ++++++++-
>   1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/e1000e/mac.c b/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/e1000e/mac.c
> index d7df2a0ed629..0174c16bbb43 100644
> --- a/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/e1000e/mac.c
> +++ b/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/e1000e/mac.c
> @@ -331,8 +331,15 @@ void e1000e_update_mc_addr_list_generic(struct e1000_hw *hw,
>   	}
>   
>   	/* replace the entire MTA table */
> -	for (i = hw->mac.mta_reg_count - 1; i >= 0; i--)
> +	for (i = hw->mac.mta_reg_count - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
>   		E1000_WRITE_REG_ARRAY(hw, E1000_MTA, i, hw->mac.mta_shadow[i]);
> +
> +		/* do not queue up too many posted writes to prevent increased
> +		 * latency for other devices on the interconnect
> +		 */
> +		if ((i % 8) == 0 && i != 0)
> +			e1e_flush();


I would prefer to avoid adding this code to all devices, particularly 
those that don't operate on real-time systems. Implementing this code 
will introduce three additional MMIO transactions which will increase 
the driver start time in various flows (up, probe, etc.).

Is there a specific reason not to use if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT)) 
as Andrew initially suggested?


> +	}
>   	e1e_flush();
>   }
>