Re: [PATCH] async_tx: deprecate broken support for channel switching

From: Vinod Koul
Date: Wed Feb 15 2017 - 23:38:55 EST


On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 06:42:09PM -0800, Dan Williams wrote:
> Back in 2011, Russell pointed out that the "async_tx channel switch"
> capability was violating expectations of the dma mapping api [1]. At the
> time the existing uses were reviewed as still usable, but that longer
> term we needed a rework of the raid offload implementation. While some
> of the framework for a fixed implementation was introduced in 2012 [2],
> the wider rewrite never materialized.
>
> There continues to be interest in raid offload with new dma/raid engine
> drivers being submitted. Those drivers must not build on top of the
> broken channel switching capability.
>
> Prevent async_tx from using an offload engine if the channel switching
> capability is enabled. This still allows the engine to be used for other
> purposes, but the broken way async_tx uses these engines for raid will
> be disabled. For configurations where this causes a performance
> regression the only solution is to start the work of eliminating the
> async_tx api and moving channel management into the raid code directly
> where it can manage marshalling an operation stream between multiple dma
> channels.

Applied, thanks

--
~Vinod