async: Asynchronous function calls to speed up kernel boot

Right now, most of the kernel boot is strictly synchronous, such that
various hardware delays are done sequentially.

In order to make the kernel boot faster, this patch introduces
infrastructure to allow doing some of the initialization steps
asynchronously, which will hide significant portions of the hardware delays
in practice.

In order to not change device order and other similar observables, this
patch does NOT do full parallel initialization.

Rather, it operates more in the way an out of order CPU does; the work may
be done out of order and asynchronous, but the observable effects
(instruction retiring for the CPU) are still done in the original sequence.

Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/init/main.c b/init/main.c
index b5a892c68375..f66715d8a853 100644
--- a/init/main.c
+++ b/init/main.c
@@ -62,6 +62,7 @@
 #include <linux/signal.h>
 #include <linux/idr.h>
 #include <linux/ftrace.h>
+#include <linux/async.h>
 #include <trace/boot.h>
 
 #include <asm/io.h>
@@ -684,7 +685,7 @@ asmlinkage void __init start_kernel(void)
         rest_init();
 }
 
-static int initcall_debug;
+int initcall_debug;
 core_param(initcall_debug, initcall_debug, bool, 0644);
 
 int do_one_initcall(initcall_t fn)
@@ -785,6 +786,8 @@ static void run_init_process(char *init_filename)
  */
 static noinline int init_post(void)
 {
+        /* need to finish all async __init code before freeing the memory */
+        async_synchronize_full();
         free_initmem();
         unlock_kernel();
         mark_rodata_ro();