[PATCH] x86_64 irq: Document what works and why on ioapics.

[ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman)]

After writing this up and sending out the email it occured to me this
information should be kept someplace a little more permanent, so the
next person who cares won't have to get a huge pile of test machines
and test to understand what doesn't work. 

A bunch of this is in my other changelog entries in the patches I
just posted but not all of it.

Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
---
 Documentation/x86_64/IO-APIC-what-works.txt |  109 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 files changed, 109 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/x86_64/IO-APIC-what-works.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/x86_64/IO-APIC-what-works.txt b/Documentation/x86_64/IO-APIC-what-works.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..40fa61f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/x86_64/IO-APIC-what-works.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,109 @@
+23 Feb 2007
+
+Ok. This is just an email to summarize my findings after investigating
+the ioapic programming.
+
+The ioapics on the E75xx chipset do have issues if you attempt to
+reprogramming them outside of the irq handler.  I have on several
+instances caused the state machine to get stuck such that an
+individual ioapic entry was no longer capable of delivering
+interrupts.  I suspect the remote IRR bit was set stuck on such that
+switch the irq to edge triggered and back to level triggered would not
+clear it but I did not confirm this.  I just know that I was switching
+the irq to between level and edge triggered with the irq masked
+and the irq did not fire.
+
+
+The ioapics on the AMD 8xxx chipset do have issues if you attempt
+to reprogram them outside of the irq handler.  I would up with 
+remote IRR set and never clearing.  But by temporarily switching
+the irq to edge triggered while it was masked I could clear
+this condition.
+
+I could not hit verifiable bugs in the ioapics on the Nforce4
+chipset.  It's amazing one part of that chipset that I can't find
+issues with.
+
+
+
+I did find an algorithm that will work successfully for migrating
+IRQs in process context if you have an ioapic that will follow pci
+ordering rules.  In particulars the properties that the algorithm
+depend on are reads guaranteeing that outstanding writes are flushed,
+and in this context irqs in flight are considered writes.  I have
+assumed that to devices outside of the cpu asic the cpu and the local
+apic appear as the same device.
+
+The algorithm was:
+- Be running with interrupts enabled in process context.
+- Mask the ioapic.
+- Read the ioapic to flush outstanding reads to the local apic.
+- Read the local apic to flush outstanding irqs to be send the cpu.
+
+- Now that all of the irqs have been delivered and the irq is masked
+  that irq is finally quiescent.
+
+- With the irq quiescent it is safe to reprogram interrupt controller
+  and the irq reception data structures.
+
+There were a lot more details but that was the essence.
+
+What I discovered was that except on the nforce chipset masking the
+ioapic and then issue a read did not behave as if the interrupts were
+flushed to the local apic. 
+
+I did not look close enough to tell if local apics suffered from this
+issue.  With local apics at least a read was necessary before you
+could guarantee the local apic would deliver pending irqs.  A work
+around on the local apics is to simply issue a low priority interrupt
+as an IPI and wait for it to be processed.  This guarantees that all
+higher priority interrupts have been flushed from the apic, and that
+the local apic has processed interrupts.
+
+For ioapics because they cannot be stimulated to send any irq by
+stimulation from the cpu side not similar work around was possible.
+
+
+
+** Conclusions.
+
+*IRQs must be reprogramed in interrupt context.
+
+The result of this is investigation is that I am convinced we need
+to perform the irq migration activities in interrupt context although
+I am not convinced it is completely safe.  I suspect multiple irqs
+firing closely enough to each other may hit the same issues as
+migrating irqs from process context.  However the odds are on our
+side, when we are in irq context.
+
+The reasoning for this is simply that.
+- Before we reprogram a level triggered irq it's remote irr bit
+  must be cleared by the irq being acknowledged before the can be
+  safely reprogrammed.
+
+- There is no generally effective way short of receiving an additional
+  irq to ensure that the irq handler has run.  Polling the ioapics
+  remote irr bit does not work.
+
+
+* The CPU hotplug code is currently very buggy.
+
+Irq migration in the cpu hotplug case is a serious problem.  If we can
+only safely migrate irqs from interrupt context and we cannot control
+when those interrupts fire, then we cannot bound the amount of time it
+will take to migrate the irqs away from a cpu.   The current cpu
+hotplug code currently calls chip->set_affinity directly which is
+wrong, as it does not take the necessary locks, and it does not
+attempt to delay execution until we are in process context.
+
+* Only an additional irq can signal the completion of an irq movement.
+
+The attempt to rebuild the irq migration code from first principles
+did bear some fruit.  I asked the question: "When is it safe to tear
+down the data structures for irq movement?".  The only answer I have
+is when I have received an irq provably from after the irq was
+reprogrammed.  This is because the only way I can reliably synchronize
+with irq delivery from an apic is to receive an additional irq.
+
+Currently this is a problem both for cpu hotplug on x86_64 and i386
+and for general irq migration on x86_64.
-- 
1.5.0.g53756

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