Re: [RFC] killing the NR_IRQS arrays.

From: Eric W. Biederman
Date: Sat Feb 17 2007 - 23:00:04 EST


Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>
>> We might need this. But I don't think we need reference counting in
>> the traditional sense. For all practical purpose we already have
>> dynamic irq allocation and it hasn't proven necessary. I would
>> prefer to go to lengths to avoid having to expose that kind of
>> an issue to driver code.
>
> I think we do need proper refcounting, but I also think that most
> drivers will not need to see it.
>
> For example, a PCI driver will most probably just do something along the
> lines of the existing request_irq(pdev->irq), the liftime of pdev->irq
> is managed by the PCI core.
>
> Same goes with MSIs imho, the MSI core can manage the lifetime
> transparently.

Yes. I'm optimistic that we won't find a case where refcounting will
be needed.

Eric
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