Re: [RFC PATCH v4 5/8] x86/smp native_play_dead: Prefer cpuidle_play_dead() over mwait_play_dead()

[Patryk Wlazlyn <patryk.wlazlyn@linux.intel.com>]

>>>>> If you first make intel_idle provide :enter_dead() for all CPUs on all
>>>>> platforms and implement it by calling mwait_play_dead_with_hint(), you
>>>>> won't need mwait_play_dead() any more.
>>>> Crossed my mind, but because mwait_play_dead doesn't filter on Intel
>>>> vendor specifically,
>>>
>>> In practice, it does.
>>>
>>> The vendor check in it is equivalent to "if Intel".
>>
>> Actually, what about INTEL_IDLE=n?
>> We might hit acpi_idle, which would call mwait_play_dead_with_hint() now, but
>> if we don't, don't we want to try mwait_play_dead before hlt or is it too
>> unrealistic to happen?
>
> In that case the hint to use would not be known anyway, so
> hlt_play_dead() is the right choice IMV.

Fair, it's not known, but we could fallback to the old, cpuid leaf 0x5 based
algorithm, which works on a lot of hardware.

That being said, I think it's cleaner to get rid of the old algorithm entirely
and rely on idle drivers to do the right thing from this point forward.

If we could bring the CPU out of the mwait loop into the hlt loop somehow (via
interrupt for example) we could remove the old kexec hack altogether.