tree e69b3c2989839bac94718c6be16dd1433da30c12
parent b21606a773faffc2b3ec326325c433bdf37ecbdf
author Linas Vepstas <linas@austin.ibm.com> 1160514693 -0500
committer Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org> 1160553866 -0400

[PATCH] powerpc/cell spidernet low watermark patch.

Implement basic low-watermark support for the transmit queue.
Hardware low-watermarks allow a properly configured kernel
to continously stream data to a device and not have to handle
any interrupts at all in doing so. Correct zero-interrupt
operation can be actually observed for this driver, when the
socket buffer is made large enough.

The basic idea of a low-watermark interrupt is as follows.
The device driver queues up a bunch of packets for the hardware
to transmit, and then kicks the hardware to get it started.
As the hardware drains the queue of pending, untransmitted
packets, the device driver will want to know when the queue
is almost empty, so that it can queue some more packets.

If the queue drains down to the low waterark, then an interrupt
will be generated. However, if the kernel/driver continues
to add enough packets to keep the queue partially filled,
no interrupt will actually be generated, and the hardware
can continue streaming packets indefinitely in this mode.

The impelmentation is done by setting the DESCR_TXDESFLG flag
in one of the packets. When the hardware sees this flag, it will
interrupt the device driver. Because this flag is on a fixed
packet, rather than at  fixed location in the queue, the
code below needs to move the flag as more packets are
queued up. This implementation attempts to keep the flag
at about 1/4 from "empty".

Signed-off-by: Linas Vepstas <linas@austin.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: James K Lewis <jklewis@us.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Signed-off-by: Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>