Re: [PATCH] bnx2x: avoid atomic allocations during initialization

[David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>]

From: Michal Schmidt <mschmidt@redhat.com>
Date: Thu,  5 Sep 2013 22:13:09 +0200

> During initialization bnx2x allocates significant amounts of memory
> (for rx data, rx SGEs, TPA pool) using atomic allocations.
> 
> I received a report where bnx2x failed to allocate SGEs and it had
> to fall back to TPA-less operation.
> 
> Let's use GFP_KERNEL allocations during initialization, which runs
> in process context. Add gfp_t parameters to functions that are used
> both in initialization and in the receive path.
> 
> Use an unlikely branch in bnx2x_frag_alloc() to avoid atomic allocation
> by netdev_alloc_frag(). The branch is taken several thousands of times
> during initialization, but then never more. Note that fp->rx_frag_size
> is never greater than PAGE_SIZE, so __get_free_page() can be used here.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Michal Schmidt <mschmidt@redhat.com>

I've applied this, the voiced objections were completely unreasonable
and absolutely do not match the established basic approaches to memory
allocation taken in every other major networking driver.

Thanks Michal.