Dan McDonald wrote:
If we call EF with pure synchronous calls, however, we may block a long time,
and that would be theoretically be BAD for IP input processing. No locks are
held, IIRC, during the part of ip_input() that calls IPsec, and no locks are
held in IPsec during the crypto-dispatch routines.
So here's the $1M questions: Can I call a blocking function from ip_input()
if no locks are being held? (And at worse, I'm only reference-holding
objects?)
Blocking for a potentially unbounded amount of time is clearly a no-no.
But I fundamentally don't see a difference between code runs a software
algorithm for 100 microseconds and code which passes the work to
hardware and then cv_waits until the hardware is done, and the hardware
is guaranteed to finish in 100 microseconds or less.
One could argue that on platforms with lots of CPUs/cores that is is
better farming off a separate thread, but in that case even the software
case algorithm should spawn off a thread.
Erik
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