Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org designates 209.132.180.67 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.132.180.67;
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: <20190110101232.9398-1-o.rempel@pengutronix.de>
 <20190110101232.9398-4-o.rempel@pengutronix.de> <CAADWXX_G7X6QkNuqnpMyr+MGP+nUhqPaifJrfC=m57mhJu2jdg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20190110151953.qpat4t7lat6plfk6@pengutronix.de> <20190110163030.GB19693@kroah.com>
 <7a593f3b-0019-c30f-30e8-34eae7b96cf0@pengutronix.de> <20190128082313.GA15182@kroah.com>
 <dedfa895-ae7e-9a64-9e89-055ca85cf2e3@pengutronix.de>
In-Reply-To: <dedfa895-ae7e-9a64-9e89-055ca85cf2e3@pengutronix.de>
From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date:   Mon, 28 Jan 2019 12:03:21 -0800
Message-ID: <CAHk-=wjOMvFBxmBSBZPZEwSyU96L5V8Qhi6bXLqzV4Sdsb2HAg@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v1 3/3] drivers/tty: increase priority for tty_buffer_worker
To:     Oleksij Rempel <o.rempel@pengutronix.de>
Cc:     Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.com>,
        Pengutronix Kernel Team <kernel@pengutronix.de>,
        lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Precedence: bulk

On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 1:22 AM Oleksij Rempel <o.rempel@pengutronix.de> wrote:
>
> Yes, I tested it with different linux-rt version with mostly similar results:

Hmm. It strikes me that you use very carefully timed serial *writes*
to control the laser cutter, but the flip buffer handling is mostly a
latency issue on the *read* side, isn't it?

Are you sure you are testing the right thing? Because your loopback
test is testing the latency not of writes, but of writes _and_ reads.

I'm wondering if we could/should try to simply avoid the workqueue
entirely if we could do the work in process context.

That's harder to do for reads - because incoming characters happen in
interrupt context, but shouldn't be all that hard to do for writes.

In fact, I thought we already did writes without any tty buffer
flipping at all, and that your patch series shouldn't actually affect
any write latency, but I've happily not had to work much with the
tty/serial layer in years..

Do you actually have read latency issues? Or is this whole series
perhaps an artifical effect of the benchmark you use?

                Linus