Re: [PATCH] atmel_serial: Split the interrupt handler

[Haavard Skinnemoen <hskinnemoen@atmel.com>]

On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:50:16 +0100
"Remy Bohmer" <linux@bohmer.net> wrote:

> Hello Haavard,
> 
> > Hmm...perhaps we can eliminate the locking in the status handler
> > too...? Does anyone see a problem with this patch?  
> 
> I have not seen any problem so far, besides, I am very happy with a
> lockless interrupt handling, because this helps reducing latencies.
> 
> Tested it on top of the other 5 patches, and everything still works,
> also tested under stress conditions.
> 
> So:
> Acked-by: Remy Bohmer <linux@bohmer.net>

Thanks. I think we can actually do it even simpler -- just check if any
of the relevant bits in pending are set, and schedule the tasklet if
they are.

Now, I suspect the locking is currently broken -- we need to guard
against updates to read_status_mask and ignore_status_mask, but I think
we can get away with only adding some locking to the tasklet, not the
interrupt handler.

Hrm. We probably need to lock while updating icount. That's a problem
since we do that from the tx interrupt handler...and I don't suppose we
want to move most of the atmel_tx_chars() code into the tasklet too...?

Haavard