Re: [tip:irq/core] genirq: Handle force threading of irqs with primary and thread handler

From: Thomas Gleixner
Date: Fri Oct 09 2015 - 06:37:36 EST


On Tue, 6 Oct 2015, Felipe Balbi wrote:
> this commit causes a performance regression for the USB driver on
> several platforms (anybody using drivers/usb/dwc3, basically).
>
> Here's the USB throughput with linux-next in 3 different scenarios:
>
> 1) Linux next without threadirqs cmdline
>
> test 0: sent 256.00 MB read 33.02 MB/s write 30.01 MB/s
>
> 2) Linux next with threadirqs on cmdline
>
> test 0: sent 256.00 MB read 30.70 MB/s write 27.89 MB/s
>
> 3) Linux next with threadirqs on cmdline + revert of $subject
>
> test 0: sent 256.00 MB read 32.93 MB/s write 29.85 MB/s
>
>
> Considering this is trying to solve an issue found on the SDHCI driver,
> shouldn't that be fixed instead ? Another option would be, of course, to
> add IRQF_NO_THREAD to dwc3, but I'd like to avoid that if possible.

It's not only an issue for SDHCI. It's a general problem with other
drivers as well.

> The way we try to use dwc3 is rather simple, actually. We use the
> primary handle *only* to detect is $this device generated the IRQ and if
> did we wake up the thread. We also don't make use of ONESHOT because we
> mask $this device IRQs in the primary handler and only unmask after the
> thread runs.

So in your case IRQF_NO_THREAD is really the solution. It will keep
your primary handler handled in the hard interrupt context. That will
work on RT as well.

> It's a bit surprising, to me at least, that simply running everything as
> a thread would have such a measurable impact, but it does.

I'm surprised of the size of the impact as well. I wouldn't have
expected that another kernel thread context switch makes such a
difference.

Thanks,

tglx
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