Using AP adapter interrupts

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 LPAR mode

To improve cryptographic performance for Linux® instances that run in LPAR mode, use AP interrupts.

About this task

Using AP interrupts instead of the polling thread frees one processor while cryptographic requests are processed.

During initialization, the zcrypt device driver checks whether AP adapter interrupts are supported by the hardware. If so, polling is disabled and the interrupt mechanism is automatically used.

To query whether AP adapter interrupts are used, read the sysfs attribute interrupt of the device. Another interrupt attribute at the AP bus level, /sys/bus/ap/ap_interrupts, indicates that the AP bus is able to handle interrupts.

Example

To read the interrupt attribute for a device 0x3e with domain 0xf, issue:
# cat  /sys/bus/ap/devices/card3e/3e.000f/interrupt
If interrupts are used, the attribute shows Interrupts enabled, otherwise Interrupts disabled.