Re: [PATCH v1] i3c: master: allocate IBI workqueue with WQ_HIGHPRI

From: Mukesh Savaliya

Date: Mon Aug 10 2026 - 14:28:03 EST




On 8/10/2026 7:00 AM, Stanley Chu wrote:
From: Stanley Chu <yschu@xxxxxxxxxxx>

The IBI (In-Band Interrupt) workqueue is allocated with only
WQ_MEM_RECLAIM, which places IBI payload processing at normal
worker priority. This is inadequate given the time-sensitive
nature of IBI handling.

In the I3C protocol, when a target asserts an IBI, the SDA line
is held low until the master acknowledges and completes the
exchange. The IRQ handler (top half) ACKs the IBI, reads the
payload, emits a STOP, and immediately queues the payload
processing to the per-device ordered workqueue via
i3c_master_queue_ibi() — effectively the bottom half of the
IBI interrupt path.

If this workqueue worker is delayed by competing normal-priority
tasks, the IBI notification reaches the client driver late. For
latency-sensitive clients (e.g. sensors reporting alerts,
hotplug events), this defeats the purpose of using IBI over
polling. Furthermore, because the ordered workqueue serialises
slots, a backlog of delayed slots can exhaust the pre-allocated
IBI slot pool, causing subsequent IBIs to be dropped at the
hardware level.

Add WQ_HIGHPRI to ensure IBI bottom-half work is scheduled
promptly after the top-half IRQ handler enqueues it, keeping
the IBI processing pipeline consistent with the interrupt-like
semantics the protocol demands.

Signed-off-by: Stanley Chu <yschu@xxxxxxxxxxx>
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Acked-by: Mukesh Kumar Savaliya <mukesh.savaliya@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>