Re: [PATCH v2 7/7] habanalabs: create two char devices per ASIC

Oded Gabbay
2019-07-30T11:24:27Z

On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 1:42 PM Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 12:47:24PM +0300, Oded Gabbay wrote:
> > This patch changes the driver to create two char devices for each ASIC
> > it discovers. This is done to allow system/monitoring applications to
> > query the device for stats, information, idle state and more, while also
> > allowing the deep-learning application to send work to the ASIC.
> >
> > One char device is the original device, hlX. IOCTL calls through this
> > device file can perform any task on the device (compute, memory, queries).
> > The open function for this device will fail if it was called before but
> > the file-descriptor it created was not completely released yet (the
> > release callback function is not called from the kernel until all
> > instances of that FD are closed). The driver needs to keep this behavior
> > to support backward compatibility with existing userspace, which count
> > that the open will fail if the device is "occupied".
> >
> > The second char device is called "hl_controlDx", where x is the minor
> > number of the original char device + 64 (HL_CONTROL_MINOR). Applications
> > that open this device can only call the INFO IOCTL. There is no limitation
> > on the number of applications opening this device.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Oded Gabbay <oded.gabbay@gmail.com>
>
> This reminds me of the old tty "control" devices we finally got rid of
> many years ago. The more things change... :)
>
> Anyway, looks sane to me. If you are ok with this userspace api, no
> objection from me.
>
> Only one comment below:
>
> > --- a/drivers/misc/habanalabs/habanalabs.h
> > +++ b/drivers/misc/habanalabs/habanalabs.h
> > @@ -51,6 +51,8 @@
> > /* MMU */
> > #define MMU_HASH_TABLE_BITS 7 /* 1 << 7 buckets */
> >
> > +#define HL_CONTROL_MINOR 64
>
> Don't try to segment your "dev" and "control" device nodes by minor
> number range, as you will run into problems once you have a system with
> more than 64 of these in the box at once.
>
> Just use the whole range, and do:
> dev = minor N
> control = minor N+1
> and so on. That makes your control device node an "odd" minor and your
> "real" device an "even".
>
> Given that all existing systems should be using devtmpfs, you should not
> have any problem with changing the minor number of them at the next
> reboot, right?
>
> thanks,
>
> greg k-h

I agree, will change that and re-send.
Oded