From: Paul Cercueil <paul@crapouillou.net>
To: "Noralf Trønnes" <noralf@tronnes.org>
Cc: Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>,
dri-devel <dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org>
Subject: Re: MIPI DSI, DBI, and tinydrm drivers
Date: Sun, 24 May 2020 21:54:03 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <3YPUAQ.ALFWN74JD6DR1@crapouillou.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <05f4908a-2df4-2694-e5e6-0faee31cc2a9@tronnes.org>
Hi Noralf,
Le dim. 24 mai 2020 à 19:46, Noralf Trønnes <noralf@tronnes.org> a
écrit :
>
>
> Den 24.05.2020 18.13, skrev Paul Cercueil:
>> Hi list,
>>
>> I'd like to open a discussion about the current support of MIPI DSI
>> and
>> DBI panels.
>>
>> Both are standards from the MIPI alliance, both are communication
>> protocols between a LCD controller and a LCD panel, they generally
>> both
>> use the same commands (DCS), the main difference is that DSI is
>> serial
>> and DBI is generally parallel.
>>
>> In the kernel right now, DSI is pretty well implemented. All the
>> infrastucture to register a DSI host, DSI device etc. is there. DSI
>> panels are implemented as regular drm_panel instances, and their
>> drivers
>> go through the DSI API to communicate with the panel, which makes
>> them
>> independent of the DSI host driver.
>>
>> DBI, on the other hand, does not have any of this. All (?) DBI
>> panels
>> are implemented as tinydrm drivers, which make them impossible to
>> use
>> with regular DRM drivers. Writing a standard drm_panel driver is
>> impossible, as there is no concept of host and device. All these
>> tinydrm
>> drivers register their own DBI host as they all do DBI over SPI.
>>
>> I think this needs a good cleanup. Given that DSI and DBI are so
>> similar, it would probably make sense to fuse DBI support into the
>> current DSI code, as trying to update DBI would result in a lot of
>> code
>> being duplicated. With the proper host/device registration mechanism
>> from DSI code, it would be possible to turn most of the tinydrm
>> drivers
>> into regular drm_panel drivers.
>>
>> The problem then is that these should still be available as tinydrm
>> drivers. If the DSI/DBI panels can somehow register a .update_fb()
>> callback, it would make it possible to have a panel-agnostic tinydrm
>> driver, which would then probably open a lot of doors, and help a
>> lot to
>> clean the mess.
>>
>> I think I can help with that, I just need some guidance - I am
>> fishing
>> in exotic seas here.
>>
>> Thoughts, comments, are very welcome.
>
> I did look at this a few months back:
>
> drm/mipi-dbi: Support panel drivers
> https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2019-August/228966.html
>
> The problem with DBI is that it has reused other busses which means we
> don't have DBI drivers, we have SPI drivers instead (6800/8080 is not
> avail. as busses in Linux yet). DSI and DPI on the other hand has
> dedicated hw controller drivers not shared with other subsystems.
I don't think that should be much of a problem. You could have a
DBI/SPI bridge, that wraps a SPI device into a DBI host, for instance.
The panel drivers would just use the DBI API without having to know
what's done behind the scene.
Cheers,
-Paul
> My initial tinydrm work used drm_panel, but I was not allowed to use
> it
> (at least not the way I had done it).
>
> Noralf.
>
>>
>> Cheers,
>> -Paul
>>
>>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-05-25 7:23 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-05-24 16:13 MIPI DSI, DBI, and tinydrm drivers Paul Cercueil
2020-05-24 17:46 ` Noralf Trønnes
2020-05-24 18:35 ` Daniel Vetter
2020-05-24 19:50 ` Paul Cercueil
2020-05-25 14:58 ` Neil Armstrong
2020-05-27 12:10 ` Paul Cercueil
2020-05-25 10:08 ` Noralf Trønnes
2020-05-28 15:27 ` Emil Velikov
2020-06-03 12:15 ` Noralf Trønnes
2020-06-03 20:25 ` Emil Velikov
2020-06-05 12:58 ` Noralf Trønnes
2020-05-24 19:54 ` Paul Cercueil [this message]
2020-05-24 20:14 ` Noralf Trønnes
2020-05-24 20:42 ` Paul Cercueil
2020-05-24 21:24 ` Noralf Trønnes
2020-05-24 21:33 ` Paul Cercueil
2020-05-25 0:46 ` Noralf Trønnes
2020-05-25 2:05 ` Paul Cercueil
2020-05-25 13:23 ` Noralf Trønnes
2020-05-24 20:06 ` Sam Ravnborg
2020-05-25 1:46 ` Paul Cercueil
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