tty: tty_port: add workqueue to flip TTY buffer

On the embedded platform, certain critical data, such as IMU data, is
transmitted through UART. The tty_flip_buffer_push() interface in the TTY
layer uses system_dfl_wq to handle the flipping of the TTY buffer.
Although the unbound workqueue can create new threads on demand and wake
up the kworker thread on an idle CPU, it may be preempted by real-time
tasks or other high-prio tasks.

flush_to_ldisc() needs to wake up the relevant data handle thread. When
executing __wake_up_common_lock(), it calls spin_lock_irqsave(), which
does not disable preemption but disables migration in RT-Linux. This
prevents the kworker thread from being migrated to other cores by CPU's
balancing logic, resulting in long delays. The call trace is as follows:
    __wake_up_common_lock
    __wake_up
    ep_poll_callback
    __wake_up_common
    __wake_up_common_lock
    __wake_up
    n_tty_receive_buf_common
    n_tty_receive_buf2
    tty_ldisc_receive_buf
    tty_port_default_receive_buf
    flush_to_ldisc

In our system, the processing interval for each frame of IMU data
transmitted via UART can experience significant jitter due to this issue.
Instead of the expected 10 to 15 ms frame processing interval, we see
spikes up to 30 to 35 ms. Moreover, in just one or two hours, there can
be 2 to 3 occurrences of such high jitter, which is quite frequent. This
jitter exceeds the software's tolerable limit of 20 ms.

Introduce flip_wq in tty_port which can be set by tty_port_link_wq() or as
default linked to default workqueue allocated when tty_register_driver().
The default workqueue is allocated with flag WQ_SYSFS, so that cpumask and
nice can be set dynamically. The execution timing of tty_port_link_wq() is
not clearly restricted. The newly added function tty_port_link_driver_wq()
checks whether the flip_wq of the tty_port has already been assigned when
linking the default tty_driver's workqueue to the port. After the user has
set a custom workqueue for a certain tty_port using tty_port_link_wq(), the
system will only use this custom workqueue, even if tty_driver does not
have %TTY_DRIVER_CUSTOM_WORKQUEUE flag.

Introduce %TTY_DRIVER_CUSTOM_WORKQUEUE flag meaning not to create the
default single tty_driver workqueue. Two reasons why need to introduce the
%TTY_DRIVER_CUSTOM_WORKQUEUE flag:
1. If the WQ_SYSFS parameter is enabled, workqueue_sysfs_register() will
fail when trying to create a workqueue with the same name. The pty is an
example of this; if both CONFIG_LEGACY_PTYS and CONFIG_UNIX98_PTYS are
enabled, the call to tty_register_driver() in unix98_pty_init() will fail.
2. Different tty ports may be used for different tasks, which may require
separate core binding control via workqueues. In this case, the workqueue
created by default in the tty driver is unnecessary. Enabling this flag
prevents the creation of this redundant workqueue.

After applying this patch, we can set the related UART TTY flip buffer
workqueue by sysfs. We set the cpumask to CPU cores associated with the
IMU tasks, and set the nice to -20. Testing has shown significant
improvement in the previously described issue, with almost no stuttering
occurring anymore.

Signed-off-by: Xin Zhao <jackzxcui1989@163.com>
Reviewed-by: Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@kernel.org>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251223034836.2625547-1-jackzxcui1989@163.com
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
7 files changed