[PATCH v2 1/6] idle: move the cpuidle entry point to the generic idle loop

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Thu, 30 Jan 2014, Preeti U Murthy wrote:

> Hi Nicolas,
> 
> On 01/30/2014 02:01 AM, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> > On Wed, 29 Jan 2014, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> > 
> >> In order to integrate cpuidle with the scheduler, we must have a better
> >> proximity in the core code with what cpuidle is doing and not delegate
> >> such interaction to arch code.
> >>
> >> Architectures implementing arch_cpu_idle() should simply enter
> >> a cheap idle mode in the absence of a proper cpuidle driver.
> >>
> >> Signed-off-by: Nicolas Pitre <nico at linaro.org>
> >> Acked-by: Daniel Lezcano <daniel.lezcano at linaro.org>
> > 
> > As mentioned in my reply to Olof's comment on patch #5/6, here's a new 
> > version of this patch adding the safety local_irq_enable() to the core 
> > code.
> > 
> > ----- >8
> > 
> > From: Nicolas Pitre <nicolas.pitre at linaro.org>
> > Subject: idle: move the cpuidle entry point to the generic idle loop
> > 
> > In order to integrate cpuidle with the scheduler, we must have a better
> > proximity in the core code with what cpuidle is doing and not delegate
> > such interaction to arch code.
> > 
> > Architectures implementing arch_cpu_idle() should simply enter
> > a cheap idle mode in the absence of a proper cpuidle driver.
> > 
> > In both cases i.e. whether it is a cpuidle driver or the default
> > arch_cpu_idle(), the calling convention expects IRQs to be disabled
> > on entry and enabled on exit. There is a warning in place already but
> > let's add a forced IRQ enable here as well.  This will allow for
> > removing the forced IRQ enable some implementations do locally and 
> 
> Why would this patch allow for removing the forced IRQ enable that are
> being done on some archs in arch_cpu_idle()? Isn't this patch expecting
> the default arch_cpu_idle() to have re-enabled the interrupts after
> exiting from the default idle state? Its supposed to only catch faulty
> cpuidle drivers that haven't enabled IRQs on exit from idle state but
> are expected to have done so, isn't it?

Exact.  However x86 currently does this:

	if (cpuidle_idle_call())
	        x86_idle();
	else
	        local_irq_enable();

So whenever cpuidle_idle_call() is successful then IRQs are 
unconditionally enabled whether or not the underlying cpuidle driver has 
properly done it or not.  And the reason is that some of the x86 cpuidle 
do fail to enable IRQs before returning.

So the idea is to get rid of this unconditional IRQ enabling and let the 
core issue a warning instead (as well as enabling IRQs to allow the 
system to run).


Nicolas