[RFC PATCH 06/36] ACPI / PPTT: Stop acpi_count_levels() expecting callers to clear levels

Jonathan Cameron Jonathan.Cameron at huawei.com
Wed Jul 16 08:51:42 PDT 2025


On Fri, 11 Jul 2025 18:36:18 +0000
James Morse <james.morse at arm.com> wrote:

> acpi_count_levels() passes the number of levels back via a pointer argument.
> It also passes this to acpi_find_cache_level() as the starting_level, and
> preserves this value as it walks up the cpu_node tree counting the levels.
> 
> The only caller acpi_get_cache_info() happens to have already initialised
> levels to zero, which acpi_count_levels() depends on to get the correct
> result.
> 
> Explicitly zero the levels variable, so the count always starts at zero.
> This saves any additional callers having to work out they need to do this.

Hi James,

This is all a bit fiddly as we now end up with that initialized in various
different places. Perhaps simpler to have acpi_count_levels() return the
number of levels rather than void. Then return number of levels rather
than 0 on success from acpi_get_cache_info(). Negative error codes used
for failure just like now.

That would leave only a local variable in acpi_count_levels being
initialized to 0 and passed to acpi_find_cache_level() before being
returned when the loop terminates.

I think that sequence then makes it such that we can't fail to
initialize it at without the compiler noticing and screaming.

Requires a few changes from if (ret) to if (ret < 0) at callers
of acpi_get_cache_info() but looks simple (says the person who
hasn't actually coded it!)

> 
> Signed-off-by: James Morse <james.morse at arm.com>
> Reviewed-by: Sudeep Holla <sudeep.holla at arm.com>
> ---
>  drivers/acpi/pptt.c | 4 +++-
>  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/drivers/acpi/pptt.c b/drivers/acpi/pptt.c
> index 13619b1b821b..13ca2eee3b98 100644
> --- a/drivers/acpi/pptt.c
> +++ b/drivers/acpi/pptt.c
> @@ -183,7 +183,7 @@ acpi_find_cache_level(struct acpi_table_header *table_hdr,
>   * @cpu_node: processor node we wish to count caches for
>   * @levels: Number of levels if success.
>   * @split_levels:	Number of split cache levels (data/instruction) if
> - *			success. Can by NULL.
> + *			success. Can be NULL.

Grumpy reviewer hat.  Unrelated cleanup up - good to have but not in this patch where
it's a distraction.

>   *
>   * Given a processor node containing a processing unit, walk into it and count
>   * how many levels exist solely for it, and then walk up each level until we hit
> @@ -196,6 +196,8 @@ static void acpi_count_levels(struct acpi_table_header *table_hdr,
>  			      struct acpi_pptt_processor *cpu_node,
>  			      unsigned int *levels, unsigned int *split_levels)
>  {
> +	*levels = 0;
> +
>  	do {
>  		acpi_find_cache_level(table_hdr, cpu_node, levels, split_levels, 0, 0);
>  		cpu_node = fetch_pptt_node(table_hdr, cpu_node->parent);




More information about the linux-arm-kernel mailing list