genirq: Provide forced interrupt threading

Add a commandline parameter "threadirqs" which forces all interrupts except
those marked IRQF_NO_THREAD to run threaded. That's mostly a debug option to
allow retrieving better debug data from crashing interrupt handlers. If
"threadirqs" is not enabled on the kernel command line, then there is no
impact in the interrupt hotpath.

Architecture code needs to select CONFIG_IRQ_FORCED_THREADING after
marking the interrupts which cant be threaded IRQF_NO_THREAD. All
interrupts which have IRQF_TIMER set are implict marked
IRQF_NO_THREAD. Also all PER_CPU interrupts are excluded.

Forced threading hard interrupts also forces all soft interrupt
handling into thread context.

When enabled it might slow down things a bit, but for debugging problems in
interrupt code it's a reasonable penalty as it does not immediately
crash and burn the machine when an interrupt handler is buggy.

Some test results on a Core2Duo machine:

Cache cold run of:
 # time git grep irq_desc

      non-threaded       threaded
 real 1m18.741s          1m19.061s
 user 0m1.874s           0m1.757s
 sys  0m5.843s           0m5.427s

 # iperf -c server
non-threaded
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.09 GBytes   933 Mbits/sec
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.09 GBytes   934 Mbits/sec
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.09 GBytes   933 Mbits/sec
threaded
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.09 GBytes   939 Mbits/sec
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.09 GBytes   934 Mbits/sec
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.09 GBytes   937 Mbits/sec

Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
LKML-Reference: <20110223234956.772668648@linutronix.de>

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
index 89835a4766a6..cac6cf9a588c 100644
--- a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -2436,6 +2436,10 @@ and is between 256 and 4096 characters. It is defined in the file
                         <deci-seconds>: poll all this frequency
                         0: no polling (default)
 
+        threadirqs      [KNL]
+                        Force threading of all interrupt handlers except those
+                        marked explicitely IRQF_NO_THREAD.
+
         topology=       [S390]
                         Format: {off | on}
                         Specify if the kernel should make use of the cpu