From: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@xxxxxxxxx>Yes, I agree. Many NIC drivers do the same thing, like Gianfar, E1000, etc.
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:23:24 -0400
This is bogus -- you should never need to slow down the hot path in such a way.
Slow down in what way? Even on x86 saving the flags is just
about as expensive as a plain sti/cli.
I would in fact prefer to see drivers unconditionally use
spin_lock_irqsave() et al. in the interrupt handler, for
consistency.