Re: 2.6.21-rc6-mm1

Stephane Eranian
2007-04-11T05:23:51Z

Venki,

On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 05:15:14PM -0700, Venki Pallipadi wrote:
> > > x86-64 expects all idle handlers to enable interrupts before returning from
> > > idle handler. This is due to enter_idle(), exit_idle() races. Make
> > > cpuidle_idle_call() confirm to this when there is no pm_idle_old.
> > >
> > > Also, cpuidle look at the return values of attch_driver() and set
> > > current_driver to NULL if attach fails on all CPUs.
> >
> > My vote would be to instead remove enter_idle() and exit_idle() from
> > x86-64, just as was done with i386. Performance monitoring
> > infrastructure shouldn't be interfering with the idle interrupt
> > delivery, as that could only hurt performance... Besides, there's
> > probably a better way of doing this than an idle notifier anyway.
> >
>
> Agreed. I did not like local_irq_enable() in cpuidle either, but added it
> anyway as it was a corner case when cpuidle is active and no driver is
> active and not a common case. I thought we will have it as a bandaid solution
> until enter_idle, exit_idle is around.
>
> Andi/Stephane: What are the plans around enter_idle exit_idle in x86-64.
> Is it still being used by perfmon for x86-64 arch?
>
The next kernel patch for Perfmon will not make use of the idle notification
anymore on any platform.

--
-Stephane