Re: [Make-wifi-fast] [PATCH RFC v3 1/4] mac80211: Add TXQ scheduling API

[Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>]

On Mon, 2018-09-10 at 15:18 +0200, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:

> If we have the start_schedule() / end_schedule() pair anyway, the latter
> could notify any TXQs that became eligible during the scheduling round.

Do we even need end_schedule()? It's hard to pass multiple things to a
single call (do you build a list?), so having

	start_schedule(), get_txq(), return_txq()

would be sufficient?

> Also, instead of having the three different API functions
> (next_txq()/may_tx()/schedule_txq()), we could  have get_txq(txq)/put_txq(txq)
> which would always need to be paired; but the argument to get_txq()
> could be optional, and if the driver passes NULL it means "give me the
> next available TXQ".

I can't say I like this. It makes the meaning totally different:

 * with NULL: use the internal scheduler to determine which one is good
   to use next
 * non-NULL: essentially equivalent to may_tx()

> So for ath9k it would be:
> 
> 
> start_schedule(ac);
> while ((txq = get_txq(NULL)) {
>   queue_aggregate(txq);
>   put_txq(txq);
> }
> end_schedule(ac);
> 
> And for ath10k/iwlwifi it would be:
> 
> on_hw_notify(txq) {
>  start_schedule(ac);
>  if (txq = get_txq(txq)) {
>    queue_packets(txq);
>    put_txq(txq);
>  }
>  end_schedule(ac);
> }
> 
> 
> I think that would be simpler, API-wise?

I can't say I see much point in overloading get_txq() that way. You'd
never use it the same way.

Also, would you really start_schedule(ac) in the hw-managed case? It
seems like not? Basically it seems to me that in the hw-managed case all
you need is may_tx()? And in fact, once you opt in you don't even really
need *that* since mac80211 can just return NULL from get_skb()?

johannes