Re: [PATCH] synchronize_irq needs a barrier

From: Benjamin Herrenschmidt
Date: Sat Oct 20 2007 - 00:09:29 EST



> > - even when you ignore the interrupt (because the driver doesn't care,
> > it's suspending), you need to make sure the hardware gets shut up by
> > reading (or writing) the proper interrupt status register.
> >
> > Otherwise, with a level interrupt, the interrupt will continue to be
> > held active ("screaming") and the CPU will get interrupted over and
> > over again, until the irq subsystem will just turn the irq off
> > entirely.
>
> His suspend routine wrote to the IRQ mask (or equivalent) register in
> his code example, thus the HW should shut up eventually, thus that isn't
> strictly necessary, the IRQ in that case is just a "short
> interrupt" (noticed by the PIC and delivered but possibly not asserted
> anymore at this stage or about to go down).

In fact, he -must not- ack it. Because is the HW is really down (in D3),
got knows what accessing the ACK register will do. I can give you
ideas... from nothing on most x86 desktops to machine checks on most
powerpc machines, though I could imagine some cards bad enough to lock
your bus up if you try to access a register while they are in D3 (I've
seen some of those critters and it seems not all bridges timeout on
cards that just keep sending retries).

Cheers,
Ben.

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