Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] sam460ex: Clean up irq mapping

[Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>]

On Thu, 31 Dec 2020 at 11:20, BALATON Zoltan <balaton@eik.bme.hu> wrote:
>
> Avoid mapping multiple interrupts to the same irq. Instead map them to
> the 4 PCI interrupts and use an or-gate in the board to connect them
> to the interrupt controller. This does not fix any known problem but
> does not seem to cause a new problem either and may be cleaner at least.
>
> Signed-off-by: BALATON Zoltan <balaton@eik.bme.hu>
> Tested-by: Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net>

So, this patch is a behavioural change, but I think it's
probably a change to the right behaviour. The difference
is relatively slight, but you would see it if there are two
different PCI cards and they both assert a different PCI
interrupt, and then one of them lowers the interrupt
before the other:

device A:   _____|---------|________
device B:   ________|----------|____

With the old code, the signal values as seen by the UIC
look like this:
UIC input:  _____|---------|________
(this is because when device A says "interrupt line value 0 now"
we just pass "interrupt line value 0" through to the output).

and with an OR gate they look like:
UIC input:  _____|-------------|____
(which is probably the actual behaviour -- UIC line stays
signalled until all PCI interrupts are quelled).

For this to matter to a guest it would have to be doing something
a bit odd in its interrupt handling code, though, I suspect
(like saying "stop looking for device drivers which need to
service their device once the UIC interrupt is no longer asserted").

Reviewed-by: Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>

thanks
-- PMM