Re: [RFC] killing the NR_IRQS arrays.

[Segher Boessenkool <segher@kernel.crashing.org>]

>>> pci: each device/function has a unique irq, drivers need not know
>>>      about it afaics.
>> Then there is msi and with msi-x you can have up to 4K irqs.
>
> I have to admit I still don't really understand how this works
> at all. Can a driver that uses msi-x have different handlers
> for each of those interrupts registered simultaneously?

Yes.  It doesn't have to, though.

> I would expect that instead there should be only one 'struct irq'
> for the device, with the handler getting a 12 bit number argument.

Why?  The device really generates many different interrupts,
why hide this fact.

>> For talking to user space I expect we will have numbers for a long 
>> time
>> to come yet.
>
> I was wondering about that. Do you only mean /proc/interrupts or
> are there other user interfaces we need to worry about?

There's the IRQ affinity stuff too.

> For /proc/interrupts, what could break if we have interrupt numbers
> only local to each controller and potentially duplicate numbers
> in the list? It's good to be paranoid about changes to proc files,
> but I can definitely see value in having meaningful interrupt
> numbers in there instead of making up a more or less random mapping
> to a flat number space.

Duplicate all this stuff into /sys in a sane format (*) and
wait until userland catches up, then throw away the /proc
interfaces.  It'll take a while, and until that day you will
have to keep *some* interrupt number <-> interrupt bijection.
Userland tools that think they know what interrupt number
should be what are dead already.

(*) i.e., exposing the interrupt tree as a tree, cascaded
controllers and all.


Segher