Affinity managed interrupts vs non-managed interrupts

[Sumit Saxena]

Hi Thomas,

We are working on next generation MegaRAID product where requirement is-
to allocate additional 16 MSI-x vectors in addition to number of MSI-x
vectors megaraid_sas driver usually allocates.  MegaRAID adapter supports
128 MSI-x vectors.

To explain the requirement and solution, consider that we have 2 socket
system (each socket having 36 logical CPUs). Current driver will allocate
total 72 MSI-x vectors by calling API- pci_alloc_irq_vectors(with flag-
PCI_IRQ_AFFINITY).  All 72 MSI-x vectors will have affinity across NUMA
nodes and interrupts are affinity managed.

If driver calls- pci_alloc_irq_vectors_affinity() with pre_vectors = 16
and, driver can allocate 16 + 72 MSI-x vectors.
All pre_vectors (16) will be mapped to all available online CPUs but
effective affinity of each vector is to CPU 0. Our requirement is to have
pre_vectors 16 reply queues to be mapped to local NUMA node with effective
CPU should be spread within local node cpu mask. Without changing kernel
code, we can achieve this by driver calling pci_enable_msix_range()
(requesting to allocate 16 + 72 MSI-x vectors) instead of
pci_alloc_irq_vectors() API. If we use pci_enable_msix_range(), it also
requires MSI-x to CPU affinity handled by driver and these interrupts will
be non-managed.

Question is-
Is there any restriction or preference of using
pci_alloc_irq_vectors{/_affinity} vs pci_enable_msix_range in low level
driver?
If driver uses non-managed interrupt, all cases are handled correctly
through irqbalancer. Is there any plan in future to migrate to managed
interrupts entirely or it is a choice based call for driver maintainers?

Thanks,
Sumit