Re: [PATCH] local_irq_disable removal

[Sven-Thorsten Dietrich <sdietrich@mvista.com>]

On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 19:16 +0200, Esben Nielsen wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Jun 2005, Sven-Thorsten Dietrich wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 16:32 +0200, Esben Nielsen wrote:
> > 
> > > > > The more I think about it the more dangerous I think it is. What does 
> > > > > local_irq_disable() protect against? All local threads as well as 
> > > > > irq-handlers. If these sections keeped mutual exclusive but preemtible 
> > > > > we will not have protected against a irq-handler.
> > > >  
> > The more Dangerous you perieve it to be. Can you point to real damage?
> > After all this is experimental code.
> > 
> > > That is exactly my point: We can't make a per-cpu mutex to replace
> > > local_irq_disable(). We have to make real lock for each subsystem now
> > > relying on local_irq_disable(). A global lock will not work. We could have
> > > a temporary lock all non-RT can share but that would be a hack similar to
> > > BKL.
> > > 
> > 
> > Why do we need any of this?
> 
> If we want deterministic task-latencies without worrying about
> proof-reading the code of every subsystem which might be using
> local_irq_disable() in some non-deterministic way, we need to make another
> locking mechanism.

Why would you want to encourage oddball approaches to driver
development? 

If a driver is causing problems this way, it should be looked at from a
design perspective, because that sort of coding style usually causes
problems with SMP as well.

> > 
> > > The current soft-irq states only gives us better hard-irq latency but
> > > nothing else. I think the overhead runtime and the complication of the
> > > code is way too big for gaining only that. 
> > 
> > 
> > Real numbers please, not speculation! Science, not religion.
> > 
> Well, isn't enough to see that the code contains more instructions and
> looks somewhat more complicated?
> 

It clarifies design aspects of the kernel, and identifies code that has
different behavior assumptions associated with it, than other code that
disables IRQs.  Its a good thing to separate that out, because then you
know what you are looking at, rather than having to assume it.


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