Re: [PATCH RFC 07/15] Documentation: Interrupt Message store

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Hi Jason,

On 4/23/2020 1:04 PM, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 04:34:30PM -0700, Dave Jiang wrote:

diff --git a/Documentation/ims-howto.rst b/Documentation/ims-howto.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..a18de152b393
+++ b/Documentation/ims-howto.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,210 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+.. include:: <isonum.txt>
+
+==========================
+The IMS Driver Guide HOWTO
+==========================
+
+:Authors: Megha Dey
+
+:Copyright: 2020 Intel Corporation
+
+About this guide
+================
+
+This guide describes the basics of Interrupt Message Store (IMS), the
+need to introduce a new interrupt mechanism, implementation details of
+IMS in the kernel, driver changes required to support IMS and the general
+misconceptions and FAQs associated with IMS.

I'm not sure why we need to call this IMS in kernel documentat? I know
Intel is using this term, but this document is really only talking
about extending the existing platform_msi stuff, which looks pretty
good actually.

hmmm, so maybe we call it something else or just say dynamic platform-msi?


A lot of this is good for the cover letter..

Well, I got a lot of comments internally and externally about how the cover page needs to have just the basics and all the ugly details can go in the Documentation. So well, I am confused here.

+Implementation of IMS in the kernel
+===================================
+
+The Linux kernel today already provides a generic mechanism to support
+non-PCI compliant MSI interrupts for platform devices (platform-msi.c).
+To support IMS interrupts, we create a new IMS IRQ domain and extend the
+existing infrastructure. Dynamic allocation of IMS vectors is a requirement
+for devices which support Scalable I/O Virtualization. A driver can allocate
+and free vectors not just once during probe (as was the case with MSI/MSI-X)
+but also in the post probe phase where actual demand is available. Thus, a
+new API, platform_msi_domain_alloc_irqs_group is introduced which drivers
+using IMS would be able to call multiple times. The vectors allocated each
+time this API is called are associated with a group ID. To free the vectors
+associated with a particular group, the platform_msi_domain_free_irqs_group
+API can be called. The existing drivers using platform-msi infrastructure
+will continue to use the existing alloc (platform_msi_domain_alloc_irqs)
+and free (platform_msi_domain_free_irqs) APIs and are assigned a default
+group ID of 0.
+
+Thus, platform-msi.c provides the generic methods which can be used by any
+non-pci MSI interrupt type while the newly created ims-msi.c provides IMS
+specific callbacks that can be used by drivers capable of generating IMS
+interrupts.

How exactly is an IMS interrupt is different from a platform msi?

It looks like it is just some thin wrapper around msi_domain - what is
it for?

So I think conceptually, there is no difference between platform-msi and IMS. (Just thinking out loud).

From a code stand-point, currently
1. Allocation of interrupts is static. I don't think the platform-msi-domain_alloc_irqs can be called multiple times. 2. only a write-msg callback is present and they use the parent IRQ chip's mask/unmask functions 3. IMS needs interrupt remapping support to be enabled (this is independent of the above 2).

If 1 and 2 is all that you are looking for, then we can split the code such that we have a generic platform_msi_domain_alloc_irqs_dyn, which will be used for the dynamic allocation of IRQs and another platform_msi_domain_alloc_irqs_ims (or whatever the name IMS will boil down to) which will use interrupt remapping support to get the IRQ domain etc.


+FAQs and general misconceptions:
+================================
+
+** There were some concerns raised by Thomas Gleixner and Marc Zyngier
+during Linux plumbers conference 2019:
+
+1. Enumeration of IMS needs to be done by PCI core code and not by
+   individual device drivers:
+
+   Currently, if the kernel needs a generic way to discover IMS capability
+   without host driver dependency, the PCIE Designated Vendor specific
+
+   However, we cannot have a standard way of enumerating the IMS size
+   because for context based devices, the interrupt message is part of
+   the context itself which is managed entirely by the driver. Since
+   context creation is done on demand, there is no way to tell during boot
+   time, the maximum number of contexts (and hence the number of interrupt
+   messages)that the device can support.

FWIW, I agree with this

Like platform-msi, IMS should be controlled entirely by the driver.
yup!


+2. Why is Intel designing a new interrupt mechanism rather than extending
+   MSI-X to address its limitations? Isn't 2048 device interrupts enough?
+
+   MSI-X has a rigid definition of one-table and on-device storage and does
+   not provide the full flexibility required for future multi-tile
+   accelerator designs.
+   IMS was envisioned to be used with large number of ADIs in devices where
+   each will need unique interrupt resources. For example, a DSA shared
+   work queue can support large number of clients where each client can
+   have its own interrupt. In future, with user interrupts, we expect the
+   demand for messages to increase further.

Generally agree

ok!

+Device Driver Changes:
+=====================
+
+1. platform_msi_domain_alloc_irqs_group (struct device *dev, unsigned int
+   nvec, const struct platform_msi_ops *platform_ops, int *group_id)
+   to allocate IMS interrupts, where:
+
+   dev: The device for which to allocate interrupts
+   nvec: The number of interrupts to allocate
+   platform_ops: Callbacks for platform MSI ops (to be provided by driver)
+   group_id: returned by the call, to be used to free IRQs of a certain type
+
+   eg: static struct platform_msi_ops ims_ops  = {
+        .irq_mask               = ims_irq_mask,
+        .irq_unmask             = ims_irq_unmask,
+        .write_msg              = ims_write_msg,
+        };
+
+        int group;
+        platform_msi_domain_alloc_irqs_group (dev, nvec, platform_ops, &group)
+
+   where, struct platform_msi_ops:
+   irq_mask:   mask an interrupt source
+   irq_unmask: unmask an interrupt source
+   irq_write_msi_msg: write message content
+
+   This API can be called multiple times. Every time a new group will be
+   associated with the allocated vectors. Group ID starts from 0.

Need much more closer look, but this seems conceptually fine to me.

As above the API here is called platform_msi - which seems good to
me. Again not sure why the word IMS is needed


well, in this case, ims_ops, ims_mask etc are just example names.

Jason




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