PM / genirq: Document rules related to system suspend and interrupts

Add a document describing how IRQs are managed during system suspend
and resume, how wakeup interrupts work and what the IRQF_NO_SUSPEND
flag is supposed to be used for.

Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>

1 files changed, 123 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/power/suspend-and-interrupts.txt b/Documentation/power/suspend-and-interrupts.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..69663640dea5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/power/suspend-and-interrupts.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,123 @@
+System Suspend and Device Interrupts
+
+Copyright (C) 2014 Intel Corp.
+Author: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
+
+
+Suspending and Resuming Device IRQs
+-----------------------------------
+
+Device interrupt request lines (IRQs) are generally disabled during system
+suspend after the "late" phase of suspending devices (that is, after all of the
+->prepare, ->suspend and ->suspend_late callbacks have been executed for all
+devices).  That is done by suspend_device_irqs().
+
+The rationale for doing so is that after the "late" phase of device suspend
+there is no legitimate reason why any interrupts from suspended devices should
+trigger and if any devices have not been suspended properly yet, it is better to
+block interrupts from them anyway.  Also, in the past we had problems with
+interrupt handlers for shared IRQs that device drivers implementing them were
+not prepared for interrupts triggering after their devices had been suspended.
+In some cases they would attempt to access, for example, memory address spaces
+of suspended devices and cause unpredictable behavior to ensue as a result.
+Unfortunately, such problems are very difficult to debug and the introduction
+of suspend_device_irqs(), along with the "noirq" phase of device suspend and
+resume, was the only practical way to mitigate them.
+
+Device IRQs are re-enabled during system resume, right before the "early" phase
+of resuming devices (that is, before starting to execute ->resume_early
+callbacks for devices).  The function doing that is resume_device_irqs().
+
+
+The IRQF_NO_SUSPEND Flag
+------------------------
+
+There are interrupts that can legitimately trigger during the entire system
+suspend-resume cycle, including the "noirq" phases of suspending and resuming
+devices as well as during the time when nonboot CPUs are taken offline and
+brought back online.  That applies to timer interrupts in the first place,
+but also to IPIs and to some other special-purpose interrupts.
+
+The IRQF_NO_SUSPEND flag is used to indicate that to the IRQ subsystem when
+requesting a special-purpose interrupt.  It causes suspend_device_irqs() to
+leave the corresponding IRQ enabled so as to allow the interrupt to work all
+the time as expected.
+
+Note that the IRQF_NO_SUSPEND flag affects the entire IRQ and not just one
+user of it.  Thus, if the IRQ is shared, all of the interrupt handlers installed
+for it will be executed as usual after suspend_device_irqs(), even if the
+IRQF_NO_SUSPEND flag was not passed to request_irq() (or equivalent) by some of
+the IRQ's users.  For this reason, using IRQF_NO_SUSPEND and IRQF_SHARED at the
+same time should be avoided.
+
+
+System Wakeup Interrupts, enable_irq_wake() and disable_irq_wake()
+------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+System wakeup interrupts generally need to be configured to wake up the system
+from sleep states, especially if they are used for different purposes (e.g. as
+I/O interrupts) in the working state.
+
+That may involve turning on a special signal handling logic within the platform
+(such as an SoC) so that signals from a given line are routed in a different way
+during system sleep so as to trigger a system wakeup when needed.  For example,
+the platform may include a dedicated interrupt controller used specifically for
+handling system wakeup events.  Then, if a given interrupt line is supposed to
+wake up the system from sleep sates, the corresponding input of that interrupt
+controller needs to be enabled to receive signals from the line in question.
+After wakeup, it generally is better to disable that input to prevent the
+dedicated controller from triggering interrupts unnecessarily.
+
+The IRQ subsystem provides two helper functions to be used by device drivers for
+those purposes.  Namely, enable_irq_wake() turns on the platform's logic for
+handling the given IRQ as a system wakeup interrupt line and disable_irq_wake()
+turns that logic off.
+
+Calling enable_irq_wake() causes suspend_device_irqs() to treat the given IRQ
+in a special way.  Namely, the IRQ remains enabled, by on the first interrupt
+it will be disabled, marked as pending and "suspended" so that it will be
+re-enabled by resume_device_irqs() during the subsequent system resume.  Also
+the PM core is notified about the event which casues the system suspend in
+progress to be aborted (that doesn't have to happen immediately, but at one
+of the points where the suspend thread looks for pending wakeup events).
+
+This way every interrupt from a wakeup interrupt source will either cause the
+system suspend currently in progress to be aborted or wake up the system if
+already suspended.  However, after suspend_device_irqs() interrupt handlers are
+not executed for system wakeup IRQs.  They are only executed for IRQF_NO_SUSPEND
+IRQs at that time, but those IRQs should not be configured for system wakeup
+using enable_irq_wake().
+
+
+Interrupts and Suspend-to-Idle
+------------------------------
+
+Suspend-to-idle (also known as the "freeze" sleep state) is a relatively new
+system sleep state that works by idling all of the processors and waiting for
+interrupts right after the "noirq" phase of suspending devices.
+
+Of course, this means that all of the interrupts with the IRQF_NO_SUSPEND flag
+set will bring CPUs out of idle while in that state, but they will not cause the
+IRQ subsystem to trigger a system wakeup.
+
+System wakeup interrupts, in turn, will trigger wakeup from suspend-to-idle in
+analogy with what they do in the full system suspend case.  The only difference
+is that the wakeup from suspend-to-idle is signaled using the usual working
+state interrupt delivery mechanisms and doesn't require the platform to use
+any special interrupt handling logic for it to work.
+
+
+IRQF_NO_SUSPEND and enable_irq_wake()
+-------------------------------------
+
+There are no valid reasons to use both enable_irq_wake() and the IRQF_NO_SUSPEND
+flag on the same IRQ.
+
+First of all, if the IRQ is not shared, the rules for handling IRQF_NO_SUSPEND
+interrupts (interrupt handlers are invoked after suspend_device_irqs()) are
+directly at odds with the rules for handling system wakeup interrupts (interrupt
+handlers are not invoked after suspend_device_irqs()).
+
+Second, both enable_irq_wake() and IRQF_NO_SUSPEND apply to entire IRQs and not
+to individual interrupt handlers, so sharing an IRQ between a system wakeup
+interrupt source and an IRQF_NO_SUSPEND interrupt source does not make sense.