Re: [PATCH] async_tx: deprecate broken support for channel switching

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 06:42:09PM -0800, Dan Williams wrote:

Back in 2011, Russell pointed out that the "async_tx channel switch"
capability was violating expectations of the dma mapping api [1]. At the
time the existing uses were reviewed as still usable, but that longer
term we needed a rework of the raid offload implementation. While some
of the framework for a fixed implementation was introduced in 2012 [2],
the wider rewrite never materialized.

There continues to be interest in raid offload with new dma/raid engine
drivers being submitted. Those drivers must not build on top of the
broken channel switching capability.

Prevent async_tx from using an offload engine if the channel switching
capability is enabled. This still allows the engine to be used for other
purposes, but the broken way async_tx uses these engines for raid will
be disabled. For configurations where this causes a performance
regression the only solution is to start the work of eliminating the
async_tx api and moving channel management into the raid code directly
where it can manage marshalling an operation stream between multiple dma
channels.

Applied, thanks

-- 
~Vinod