RE: Updated MSI Patches

Nakajima, Jun
2003-08-13T04:14:43Z

> But back to the subject, your patch looks good, i'll test it for
> regression (no MSI devices but regression testing is just as
important)
> when you next post.

Thanks. Long will make another patch that reflects my last comments.

Jun

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Zwane Mwaikambo [mailto:zwane@linuxpower.ca]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 6:37 PM
> To: Nakajima, Jun
> Cc: Jeff Garzik; Nguyen, Tom L; Linux Kernel; long
> Subject: RE: Updated MSI Patches
>
> On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, Nakajima, Jun wrote:
>
> > Salability means many things. I'm not sure which aspect you are
talking
> > about, but a good thing with MSI is that it does not depend on I/O
> > APICs. A typical I/O APIC has 24 RTEs, and we need about 10 I/O
APICs to
> > consume the vectors.
>
> Yes there are already a number of systems which exhibit this problem
(see
> the URL in the next comment)
>
> > You can make this scale on SMP systems. The vector-based approach
would
> > be easier to extend it per-CPU because vectors are inherently
per-CPU,
> > compared with IRQ-based. Today we have IRQ balancing as you know,
and
> > the key part is to bind IRQ to a particular CPU (BTW, with our patch
it
> > happens automatically because the balancer does not care if they are
IRQ
> > or vector).
>
> Sorry, yeah i meant device scalability essentially, the ability to
plug in
> a fair amount of these and other devices into the same system. The per
cpu
> IDT route is also worthwhile following a bit later on. I've already
> written something along the lines of a per node IDT (you could make
the
> granularity per cpu of course) if you're interested you can have a
look
> here http://www.osdl.org/projects/numaqhwspprt/results/patch-numaq-
> highirq10 it
> also has a companion patch to dynamically allocate the irq_desc's
which
> applies on top of it
http://function.linuxpower.ca/patches/patch-dynirq-
> wli
>
> But back to the subject, your patch looks good, i'll test it for
> regression (no MSI devices but regression testing is just as
important)
> when you next post.
>
> Thanks!
> Zwane