Re: [PATCH 1/2] IB/hfi1: Try slot reset before secondary bus reset

[Alex Williamson]

On Mon, 23 Apr 2018 13:28:22 -0400
Sinan Kaya <okaya@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 4/20/2018 11:04 AM, Alex Williamson wrote:
> > Is there a concern here about whether the endpoint device driver or the
> > PCI core really knows better about link retraining?  This makes me
> > remember my unfinished (and need to revisit) Pericom quirk[1] where
> > errata in the PCIe switch requires that upstream and downstream links
> > are balanced (ie. same link rate) or else enabling ACS results in
> > packets not properly flowing through the switch.  If an endpoint driver
> > starts deciding to retrain links, overriding quirks in the PCI core,
> > then such topology manipulation isn't possible.  Why does the
> > driver .probe() function think it can retrain at a higher link rate
> > than PCI core?  Thanks,  
> 
> The example given is for some serdes firmware load to happen in probe and
> then performing a retrain to reach to a better speed.
> 
> It becomes a chicken and egg problem. 
> 
> 1. Endpoint HW trains to gen1 by default pre-boot.
> 2. PCI core enumerates the device.
> 3. Endpoint driver gets loaded
> 4. Driver does the firmware programming followed by a link retrain.
> 
> I think it is the responsibility of the PCI core to provide reset APIs.
> However, expecting endpoint drivers to be knowledgeable about hotplug is
> too much.
> 
> We can certainly contain AER change into pci directory by moving the slot
> reset function to drivers/pci.h file.
> 
> But, we need to think about what to do about VFIO and other endpoint
> initiated reset cases. My suggestion was to move this into a single API and
> remove all other APIs from include/linux/pci.h.

I'm a little confused about the relation between reset and retrain.
AIUI we can retrain the link without any sort of endpoint reset and if
some sort of driver/firmware setup is required on the endpoint to
achieve the target link speed, then I'd think we only want to retrain.
How this is going to work with vfio is an interesting question.  We're
only providing access to the device, not the link to the device.
Multifunction endpoints become a big problem if one function starts
requesting link retraining while another is in use elsewhere.
 
> Coming back to this patch...
> 
> Do we need a retrain API with the speed that driver wants to reach to?
> API can return what was actually accomplished. The quirk from Alex can
> run inside this API to make a decision on what speed do we actually want
> to reach to for a given PCI topology by reprogramming the target link speed
> field.

Yes, I think the core should provide a retraining API, that would also
make the Pericom quirk easier to implement.  We'd want a field/flag on
the pcidev that could be set by quirks to limit the highest target
rate, but it makes sense that this should be an interface provided by
and control point for the PCI core.  Thanks,

Alex