[RFC PATCH 0/3] gpu: nova-core: add basic timer subdevice implementation

[Boqun Feng]

On Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 12:17:33PM -0400, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 07:18:02AM -0800, Boqun Feng wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 10:46:18AM -0400, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > > On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 04:41:08PM -0800, Boqun Feng wrote:
> > > > And if you don't store the HrTimerHandle anywhere, like you drop() it
> > > > right after start a hrtimer, it will immediately stop the timer. Does
> > > > this make sense?
> > > 
> > > Oh, I understand that, but it is not sufficient in the kernel.
> > > 
> > > You are making an implicit argument that something external to the
> > > rust universe will hold the module alive until all rust destructors
> > > are run. That is trivialy obvious in your example above.
> > > 
> > 
> > The question in your previous email is about function pointer of hrtimer
> > EAF because of module unload, are you moving to a broader topic
> > here?
> 
> No
> 
> > If no, the for module unload, the argument is not implicit because in
> > rust/macro/module.rs the module __exit() function is generated by Rust,
> > and in that function, `assume_init_drop()` will call these
> > destructors.
> 
> That is not what I mean. You can be running code in multiple threads
> from multiple functions in the module those are all being protected
> implicitly by external C code functions. Rust itself is not managing
> module life time.
> 
> Then you are making the argument that everything created by a rust
> module somehow traces its reference back to the module itself,
> regardless of what thread, callback or memory was used to create it.
> 
> So all bindings for everything are expected to clean themselves up,
> recursively.
> 

Right, that would be the most cases in Rust if you want to control the 
cleanup orderings.

> That does make sense, but then it still raises questions that things
> like workqueue don't seem to have the cleanup.
> 

It was because the existing Workqueue was designed for built-in cases,
and we should fix that. Thank you for spotting that.

> I still wonder why you couldn't also have these reliable reference
> counts rooted on the device driver instead of only on the module.
> 

You could put reliable reference counts anywhere you want, as long as it
reflects the resource dependencies.

Regards,
Boqun

> Jason