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Takashi Iwai 307cc9baac ALSA: usb-audio: Reduce latency at playback start, take#2
This is another attempt for the reduction of the latency at the start
of a USB audio playback stream.  The first attempt in the commit
9ce650a75a caused an unexpected regression (a deadlock with pipewire
usage) and was later reverted by the commit 4b820e167b.  The devils
are always living in details, of course; the cause of the deadlock was
the call of snd_pcm_period_elapsed() inside prepare_playback_urb()
callback.  In the original code, this callback is never called from
the stream lock context as it's driven solely from the URB complete
callback.  Along with the movement of the URB submission into the
trigger START, this prepare call may be also executed in the stream
lock context, hence it deadlocked with the another lock in
snd_pcm_period_elapsed().  (Note that this happens only conditionally
with a small period size that matches with the URB buffer length,
which was a reason I overlooked during my tests.  Also, the problem
wasn't seen in the capture stream because the capture stream handles
the period-elapsed only at retire callback that isn't executed at the
trigger.)

If it were only about avoiding the deadlock, it'd be possible to use
snd_pcm_period_elapsed_under_stream_lock() as a solution.  However, in
general, the period elapsed notification must be sent after the actual
stream start, and replacing the call wouldn't satisfy the pattern.
A better option is to delay the notification after the stream start
procedure finished, instead.  In the case of USB framework, one of the
fitting place would be the complete callback of the first URB.

So, as a workaround of the deadlock and the order fixes above, in
addition to the re-applying the changes in the commit 9ce650a75a,
this patch introduces a new flag indicating the delayed period-elapsed
handling and sets it under the possible deadlock condition
(i.e. prepare callback being called before subs->running is set).
Once when the flag is set, the period-elapsed call is handled at a
later URB complete call instead.

As a reference for the original motivation for the low-latency change,
I cite here again:

| USB-audio driver behaves a bit strangely for the playback stream --
| namely, it starts sending silent packets at PCM prepare state while
| the actual data is submitted at first when the trigger START is
| kicked off.  This is a workaround for the behavior where URBs are
| processed too quickly at the beginning.  That is, if we start
| submitting URBs at trigger START, the first few URBs will be
| immediately completed, and this would result in the immediate
| period-elapsed calls right after the start, which may confuse
| applications.
|
| OTOH, submitting the data after silent URBs would, of course, result
| in a certain delay of the actual data processing, and this is rather
| more serious problem on modern systems, in practice.
|
| This patch tries to revert the workaround and lets the URB
| submission starting at PCM trigger for the playback again.  As far
| as I've tested with various backends (native ALSA, PA, JACK, PW), I
| haven't seen any problems (famous last words :)
|
| Note that the capture stream handling needs no such workaround,
| since the capture is driven per received URB.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/4e71531f-4535-fd46-040e-506a3c256bbd@marcan.st
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/s5hbl7li0fe.wl-tiwai@suse.de
Signed-off-by: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210707112447.27485-1-tiwai@suse.de
Signed-off-by: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>
2021-07-07 16:45:33 +02:00
arch IOMMU Updates for Linux v5.14 2021-07-02 13:22:47 -07:00
block SCSI misc on 20210702 2021-07-02 15:14:36 -07:00
certs Kbuild updates for v5.13 (2nd) 2021-05-08 10:00:11 -07:00
crypto Merge branch 'linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/herbert/crypto-2.6 2021-06-28 16:04:56 -07:00
Documentation sound updates for 5.14 2021-07-02 15:25:23 -07:00
drivers sound updates for 5.14 2021-07-02 15:25:23 -07:00
fs New code for 5.14: 2021-07-02 14:30:27 -07:00
include sound updates for 5.14 2021-07-02 15:25:23 -07:00
init Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2021-07-02 12:08:10 -07:00
ipc Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2021-07-02 12:08:10 -07:00
kernel SCSI misc on 20210702 2021-07-02 15:14:36 -07:00
lib linux-kselftest-kunit-fixes-5.14-rc1 2021-07-02 12:58:26 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add the CC-BY-4.0 license 2020-12-08 10:33:27 -07:00
mm Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2021-07-02 12:08:10 -07:00
net asm-generic/unaligned: Unify asm/unaligned.h around struct helper 2021-07-02 12:43:40 -07:00
samples Networking changes for 5.14. 2021-06-30 15:51:09 -07:00
scripts Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2021-07-02 12:08:10 -07:00
security asm-generic/unaligned: Unify asm/unaligned.h around struct helper 2021-07-02 12:43:40 -07:00
sound ALSA: usb-audio: Reduce latency at playback start, take#2 2021-07-07 16:45:33 +02:00
tools linux-kselftest-next-5.14-rc1 2021-07-02 13:09:15 -07:00
usr .gitignore: prefix local generated files with a slash 2021-05-02 00:43:35 +09:00
virt Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2021-06-29 17:29:11 -07:00
.clang-format clang-format: Update with the latest for_each macro list 2021-05-12 23:32:39 +02:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore Opt out of scripts/get_maintainer.pl 2019-05-16 10:53:40 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: use 'dts' diff driver for dts files 2019-12-04 19:44:11 -08:00
.gitignore .gitignore: ignore only top-level modules.builtin 2021-05-02 00:43:35 +09:00
.mailmap m68k updates for v5.14 2021-06-28 14:01:03 -07:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: move Murali Karicheri to credits 2021-04-29 15:47:30 -07:00
Kbuild kbuild: rename hostprogs-y/always to hostprogs/always-y 2020-02-04 01:53:07 +09:00
Kconfig kbuild: ensure full rebuild when the compiler is updated 2020-05-12 13:28:33 +09:00
MAINTAINERS sound updates for 5.14 2021-07-02 15:25:23 -07:00
Makefile arm64 updates for 5.14 2021-06-28 14:04:24 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.