Hello!

I am working with an asic that is controlled by CPU. With our current board this asic sends interrupts to processor via single interrupt line. CPU sees level active interrupt, and reads the reason(s) from asic's register. When handler(s) have executed, the read interrupts are acked to asic, and if no more interrupt(s) have ocurred on asic, this interrupt line is brought in inactive state. If new (different type of) interrupts have occurred on asic, the acking wont clean all interrupts from asic's register and asic keeps the interrupt line activated. Thus CPU is interrupted again && this process is done again && all interrupts are handled.

Now there is plans to make this asic to use PCIe, and MSI interrupts. Also we hope to utilize the same driver(s) for this asic. So first idea would be to implement this as:

1. asic generates irq

2. MSI interrupt is sent (to PCIe controller) and CPU is interrupted

3. CPU acks interrupt to PCIe controller.

4. isr reads the interrupt reason(s) from asic and handles interrupt(s)

5. isr acks the interrupts.

So is there a problem if new interrupt is generated between steps 4 and 5. Do we lose this new interrupt because the isr is still running? So when the isr acks interrupts to asic, it does not ack this new one because it had not happened when the reasons were read at step 4?

I have read the MSI-HOWTO.txt and genirq guides, and even tried to read some sources. However I have not found out solid answer. Is there some de-facto method to do this so it works reliably?

Following section may contain errors, it is what I have guessed by reading the sources - please kick me if it sounds stupid.

By reading the sources I have figured that the "interrupt-controller" for MSI interrupts on processor does used handle_simple_irq as flow handler. If I am correct, this does not "queue" interrupts in same fashion the handle_edge_irq would do.

Does this mean that my fear is correct?

Matti Vaittinen