Re: [PATCH 4/5] PCI, MSI: Enable multiple MSIs with pci_enable_msi_block_auto()

[Bjorn Helgaas]

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 2:19 AM, Alexander Gordeev <agordeev@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 10:00:39AM -0600, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 8:49 AM, Alexander Gordeev <agordeev@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > -4.2.3 pci_disable_msi
>> > +4.2.3 pci_enable_msi_block_auto
>> > +
>> > +int pci_enable_msi_block_auto(struct pci_dev *dev, int *count)
>> > +
>> > +This variation on pci_enable_msi() call allows a device driver to request
>> > +the maximum possible number of MSIs.  The MSI specification only allows
>> > +interrupts to be allocated in powers of two, up to a maximum of 2^5 (32).
>> > +
>> > +If this function returns 0, it has succeeded in allocating as many
>> > +interrupts as the device supports.
>> > +
>> > +If this function returns a positive number, it indicates that it has
>> > +succeeded, but the number of allocated interrupts is less than the number
>> > +of interrupts the device supports. The returned value in this case is the
>> > +number of allocated interrupts.
>>
>> Seems like it would be simpler to avoid the special case of returning
>> zero.  You could return a negative value for failure, otherwise return
>> the number of interrupts allocated.
>
> But this special case is important, because some drivers would not get
> satisfied with just any number of interrupts allocated (i.e. few Intel AHCI
> chips (seems) have hardware logic that compares qmask vs qsize and simply
> falls back to single interrupt if they are not equal).
>
> So I see the fact that maximum possible number of interrupts were allocated
> at least as important than the number itself.
>
>> Then you could also dispense with the "int *count" argument, because
>> the caller could just look at the return value.
>
> What about returning the number of allocated interrtupts while storing the
> number of supported interrupts to "int *count" (or maxcount)?

I like that idea a lot better because then you don't need a special
case to interpret the return value.
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