RE: x86/irq: Unbreak interrupt affinity setting

[Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>]

On Wed, Aug 26 2020 at 21:37, David Laight wrote:
> From: Thomas Gleixner
>> Sent: 26 August 2020 21:22
> ...
>> Moving interrupts on x86 happens in several steps. A new vector on a
>> different CPU is allocated and the relevant interrupt source is
>> reprogrammed to that. But that's racy and there might be an interrupt
>> already in flight to the old vector. So the old vector is preserved until
>> the first interrupt arrives on the new vector and the new target CPU. Once
>> that happens the old vector is cleaned up, but this cleanup still depends
>> on the vector number being stored in pt_regs::orig_ax, which is now -1.
>
> I suspect that it is much more 'racy' than that for PCI-X interrupts.
> On the hardware side there is an interrupt disable bit, and address
> and a value.
> To raise an interrupt the hardware must write the value to the
> address.

Really?

> If the cpu needs to move an interrupt both the address and value
> need changing, but the cpu wont write the address and value using
> the same TLP, so the hardware could potentially write a value to
> the wrong address.

Now I understand finally why msi_set_affinity() in x86 has to be so
convoluted.

Thanks a lot for the enlightment!

       tglx