Re: [announce] [patch] limiting IRQ load, irq-rewrite-2.4.11-B5

Davide Libenzi
2001-10-05T00:15:53Z

On Thu, 4 Oct 2001, Ben Greear wrote:

> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >
> > On 4 Oct 2001, Robert Love wrote:
> > >
> > > Agreed. I am actually amazed that the opposite of what is happening
> > > does not happen -- that more people aren't clamoring for this solution.
> >
> > Ehh.. I think that most people who are against Ingo's patches are so
> > mainly because there _is_ an alternative that looks nicer.
> >
> > Linus
>
> The alternative (NAPI) only works with Tulip and Intel NICs, it seems.
> When the alternative works for every driver known (including 3rd party
> ones, like the e100), then it will truly be an alternative. Untill
> then, it will be a great feature for those who can use it, and the
> rest of the poor folks will need a big generic hammer.

NAPI needs aware drivers and introduces changes to the queue processing (
packets left in DMA ring ) and it'll be at least 2.5.x
It's clearly a nicer solution that does not suffer of drawbacks that
Ingo's code have.
Ingo's patch is more hack-ish but addresses the problem with minimal
changes.

- Davide