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authorRoland Dreier <rolandd@cisco.com>2007-05-06 21:02:48 -0700
committerRoland Dreier <rolandd@cisco.com>2007-05-06 21:18:11 -0700
commited23a72778f3dbd465e55b06fe31629e7e1dd2f3 (patch)
tree99ab8b4cf7c51ae64b4d3d9108e82b31db2b3465 /Documentation
parentf4fd0b224d60044d2da5ca02f8f2b5150c1d8731 (diff)
IB: Return "maybe missed event" hint from ib_req_notify_cq()
The semantics defined by the InfiniBand specification say that completion events are only generated when a completions is added to a completion queue (CQ) after completion notification is requested. In other words, this means that the following race is possible: while (CQ is not empty) ib_poll_cq(CQ); // new completion is added after while loop is exited ib_req_notify_cq(CQ); // no event is generated for the existing completion To close this race, the IB spec recommends doing another poll of the CQ after requesting notification. However, it is not always possible to arrange code this way (for example, we have found that NAPI for IPoIB cannot poll after requesting notification). Also, some hardware (eg Mellanox HCAs) actually will generate an event for completions added before the call to ib_req_notify_cq() -- which is allowed by the spec, since there's no way for any upper-layer consumer to know exactly when a completion was really added -- so the extra poll of the CQ is just a waste. Motivated by this, we add a new flag "IB_CQ_REPORT_MISSED_EVENTS" for ib_req_notify_cq() so that it can return a hint about whether the a completion may have been added before the request for notification. The return value of ib_req_notify_cq() is extended so: < 0 means an error occurred while requesting notification == 0 means notification was requested successfully, and if IB_CQ_REPORT_MISSED_EVENTS was passed in, then no events were missed and it is safe to wait for another event. > 0 is only returned if IB_CQ_REPORT_MISSED_EVENTS was passed in. It means that the consumer must poll the CQ again to make sure it is empty to avoid the race described above. We add a flag to enable this behavior rather than turning it on unconditionally, because checking for missed events may incur significant overhead for some low-level drivers, and consumers that don't care about the results of this test shouldn't be forced to pay for the test. Signed-off-by: Roland Dreier <rolandd@cisco.com>
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