Re: [PATCH 1/2] IB/hfi1: Try slot reset before secondary bus reset

[Bjorn Helgaas]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 01:10:44PM -0600, Alex Williamson wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Apr 2018 13:28:22 -0400
> Sinan Kaya <okaya@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > On 4/20/2018 11:04 AM, Alex Williamson wrote:
> > > Is there a concern here about whether the endpoint device driver or the
> > > PCI core really knows better about link retraining?  This makes me
> > > remember my unfinished (and need to revisit) Pericom quirk[1] where
> > > errata in the PCIe switch requires that upstream and downstream links
> > > are balanced (ie. same link rate) or else enabling ACS results in
> > > packets not properly flowing through the switch.  If an endpoint driver
> > > starts deciding to retrain links, overriding quirks in the PCI core,
> > > then such topology manipulation isn't possible.  Why does the
> > > driver .probe() function think it can retrain at a higher link rate
> > > than PCI core?  Thanks,  
> > 
> > The example given is for some serdes firmware load to happen in probe and
> > then performing a retrain to reach to a better speed.
> > 
> > It becomes a chicken and egg problem. 
> > 
> > 1. Endpoint HW trains to gen1 by default pre-boot.
> > 2. PCI core enumerates the device.
> > 3. Endpoint driver gets loaded
> > 4. Driver does the firmware programming followed by a link retrain.
> > 
> > I think it is the responsibility of the PCI core to provide reset APIs.
> > However, expecting endpoint drivers to be knowledgeable about hotplug is
> > too much.
> > 
> > We can certainly contain AER change into pci directory by moving the slot
> > reset function to drivers/pci.h file.
> > 
> > But, we need to think about what to do about VFIO and other endpoint
> > initiated reset cases. My suggestion was to move this into a single API and
> > remove all other APIs from include/linux/pci.h.
> 
> I'm a little confused about the relation between reset and retrain.
> AIUI we can retrain the link without any sort of endpoint reset and if
> some sort of driver/firmware setup is required on the endpoint to
> achieve the target link speed, then I'd think we only want to retrain.

In hfi1, do_pcie_gen3_transition() resets the device.  I don't know if
retraining the link would be sufficient; maybe the reset is required
to make the device use the new firmware.  I guess we already export
reset interfaces, so if we add a retrain interface, drivers could
choose what they need.

> How this is going to work with vfio is an interesting question.  We're
> only providing access to the device, not the link to the device.

> Multifunction endpoints become a big problem if one function starts
> requesting link retraining while another is in use elsewhere.

Can we just make it the driver's problem by returning -EPERM if one
function requests a retrain while another function is in use?

Bjorn