Re: [PATCH v1 00/18] Refactor fw_devlink to significantly improve boot time

[Saravana Kannan]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 3:23 PM Saravana Kannan <saravanak@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> The current implementation of fw_devlink is very inefficient because it
> tries to get away without creating fwnode links in the name of saving
> memory usage. Past attempts to optimize runtime at the cost of memory
> usage were blocked with request for data showing that the optimization
> made significant improvement for real world scenarios.
>
> We have those scenarios now. There have been several reports of boot
> time increase in the order of seconds in this thread [1]. Several OEMs
> and SoC manufacturers have also privately reported significant
> (350-400ms) increase in boot time due to all the parsing done by
> fw_devlink.
>
> So this patch series refactors fw_devlink to be more efficient. The key
> difference now is the addition of support for fwnode links -- just a few
> simple APIs. This also allows most of the code to be moved out of
> firmware specific (DT mostly) code into driver core.
>
> This brings the following benefits:
> - Instead of parsing the device tree multiple times (complexity was
>   close to O(N^3) where N in the number of properties) during bootup,
>   fw_devlink parses each fwnode node/property only once and creates
>   fwnode links. The rest of the fw_devlink code then just looks at these
>   fwnode links to do rest of the work.
>
> - Makes it much easier to debug probe issue due to fw_devlink in the
>   future. fw_devlink=on blocks the probing of devices if they depend on
>   a device that hasn't been added yet. With this refactor, it'll be very
>   easy to tell what that device is because we now have a reference to
>   the fwnode of the device.
>
> - Much easier to add fw_devlink support to ACPI and other firmware
>   types. A refactor to move the common bits from DT specific code to
>   driver core was in my TODO list as a prerequisite to adding ACPI
>   support to fw_devlink. This series gets that done.
>
> Tomi/Laurent/Grygorii,
>
> If you can test this series, that'd be great!
>
> Thanks,
> Saravana
>
> [1] - https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pm/CAGETcx-aiW251dhEXT1GNb9bi6YcX8W=jLBrro5CnPuEjGL09g@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/

Forgot the update this link in the cover letter. Here's a much better
link to the thread that discusses boot time regression:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-omap/ea02f57e-871d-cd16-4418-c1da4bbc4696@xxxxxx/


-Saravana