Re: [PATCH 2/2] mlx5: fix 64-bit division on times

[Saeed Mahameed <saeedm@dev.mellanox.co.il>]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 6:27 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> The mlx5 driver fails to build on 32-bit architectures after some
> references to 64-bit divisions got added:
>
> drivers/net/built-in.o: In function `mlx5e_rx_am':
> :(.text+0xf88ac): undefined reference to `__aeabi_ldivmod'
>
> The driver even performs three division here, and it uses the
> obsolete 'struct timespec' that we want to get rid of.
>
> Using ktime_t and ktime_us_delta() replaces one of the divisions
> and is mildly more efficient, aside from working across 'settimeofday'
> calls and being the right type for the y2038 conversion.
>
> Using a u32 instead of s64 to store the number of microseconds
> limits the maximum time to about 71 minutes, but if we exceed that
> time, we probably don't care about the result any more for the
> purpose of rx coalescing.
>
> For the number of packets, we are taking the difference between
> two 'unsigned int', so the result won't ever be greater than that
> either.
>
> After those changes, the other two divisions are done as 32-bit
> arithmetic operations, which are much faster.

Nice catch Arnd,  we originally fixed this with div_u64, but your
solution looks wiser.
does ktime_t gives time in a resolution same as timespec ?

As discussed before this patch can't be applied on net-next as
the original patch which it meant to fix is yet to be submitted,
I will CC you once we submit the fixed patch.