Re: [PATCH] ipmi: kcs: Update OBF poll timeout to reduce latency

[Paul Menzel]

Dear Andrew,


Thank you for your patch. Some style suggestions.

Am 20.02.24 um 13:36 schrieb Andrew Geissler:
> From: Andrew Geissler <geissonator@xxxxxxxxx>

(Oh no, Yahoo. (ignore))

You could be more specific in the git commit message by using *Double*:

> ipmi: kcs: Double OBF poll timeout to reduce latency

> ipmi: kcs: Double OBF poll timeout to 200 us to reduce latency

> Commit f90bc0f97f2b ("ipmi: kcs: Poll OBF briefly to reduce OBE
> latency") introduced an optimization to poll when the host has
> read the output data register (ODR). Testing has shown that the 100us
> timeout was not always enough. When we miss that 100us window, it
> results in 10x the time to get the next message from the BMC to the
> host. When you're sending 100's of messages between the BMC and Host,

I do not understand, how this poll timeout can result in such an 
increase, and why a quite big timeout hurts, but I do not know the 
implementation.

> this results in a server boot taking 50% longer for IBM P10 machines.
>
> Started with 1000 and worked it down until the issue started to reoccur.
> 200 was the sweet spot in my testing. 150 showed the issue
> intermittently.

I’d add a blank line here.

> Signed-off-by: Andrew Geissler <geissonator@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>   drivers/char/ipmi/kcs_bmc_aspeed.c | 2 +-
>   1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/drivers/char/ipmi/kcs_bmc_aspeed.c b/drivers/char/ipmi/kcs_bmc_aspeed.c
> index 72640da55380..af1eae6153f6 100644
> --- a/drivers/char/ipmi/kcs_bmc_aspeed.c
> +++ b/drivers/char/ipmi/kcs_bmc_aspeed.c
> @@ -422,7 +422,7 @@ static void aspeed_kcs_irq_mask_update(struct kcs_bmc_device *kcs_bmc, u8 mask,
>   			 * missed the event.
>   			 */
>   			rc = read_poll_timeout_atomic(aspeed_kcs_inb, str,
> -						      !(str & KCS_BMC_STR_OBF), 1, 100, false,
> +						      !(str & KCS_BMC_STR_OBF), 1, 200, false,
>   						      &priv->kcs_bmc, priv->kcs_bmc.ioreg.str);
>   			/* Time for the slow path? */
>   			if (rc == -ETIMEDOUT)


Kind regards,

Paul