Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S933342AbXJQJJX (ORCPT ); Wed, 17 Oct 2007 05:09:23 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1757702AbXJQJJI (ORCPT ); Wed, 17 Oct 2007 05:09:08 -0400 Received: from gate.crashing.org ([63.228.1.57]:34470 "EHLO gate.crashing.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932221AbXJQJJG (ORCPT ); Wed, 17 Oct 2007 05:09:06 -0400 Subject: Re: [PATCH] PHYLIB: IRQ event workqueue handling fixes From: Benjamin Herrenschmidt Reply-To: benh@kernel.crashing.org To: Jarek Poplawski Cc: "Maciej W. Rozycki" , Andy Fleming , Andrew Morton , Jeff Garzik , netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: <20071017085809.GA1658@ff.dom.local> References: <20071015125301.GC3015@ff.dom.local> <20071016062108.GB1000@ff.dom.local> <20071017085809.GA1658@ff.dom.local> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:08:44 +1000 Message-Id: <1192612124.11899.165.camel@pasglop> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.12.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1143 Lines: 28 > Btw., since, because of this patch, I've had a one more look at phy.c > and there are a few more doubts, so this time I'll try to bother you > for real: .../... While there... is somebody interested in making the whole PHY lib operate a task level and use mutexes instead of spinlock ? I need that for drivers like EMAC (who use their own PHY layer for now), and I might even give a go at adapting phylib myself, but I'd like to take the temperature about it first. Basically, there is nothing in phylib that is performance critical or such that requires it to run at irq time and/or use locks. On the other hand, it complicates things in various areas. The most obvious one being that it prevents the network driver mii access callbacks from sleeping which can be annoying as MDIO can be slow, and some drivers have fancy muxes in there that are better off mutexed than spinlocked. Ben. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/