Re: [RFT PATCH v2 1/2] regulator: core: Require regulator drivers to check uV for get_optimum_mode()

From: Andrew Halaney <ahalaney@redhat.com>
To: Douglas Anderson <dianders@chromium.org>
Cc: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>,
	Liam Girdwood <lgirdwood@gmail.com>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFT PATCH v2 1/2] regulator: core: Require regulator drivers to check uV for get_optimum_mode()
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2022 10:15:11 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20220825151511.6nihkswhqz2ei6dc@halaneylaptop> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20220824142229.RFT.v2.1.I137e6bef4f6d517be7b081be926059321102fd3d@changeid>

On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 02:22:56PM -0700, Douglas Anderson wrote:
> The get_optimum_mode() for regulator drivers is passed the input
> voltage and output voltage as well as the current. This is because, in
> theory, the optimum mode can depend on all three things.
> 
> It turns out that for all regulator drivers in mainline only the
> current is looked at when implementing get_optimum_mode(). None of the
> drivers take the input or output voltage into account. Despite the
> fact that none of the drivers take the input or output voltage into
> account, though, the regulator framework will error out before calling
> into get_optimum_mode() if it doesn't know the input or output
> voltage.
> 
> The above behavior turned out to be a probelm for some boards when we
> landed commit efb0cb50c427 ("regulator: qcom-rpmh: Implement
> get_optimum_mode(), not set_load()"). Before that change we'd have no
> problems running drms_uA_update() for RPMH regulators even if a
> regulator's input or output voltage was unknown. After that change
> drms_uA_update() started to fail. This is because typically boards
> using RPMH regulators don't model the input supplies of RPMH
> regulators. Input supplies for RPMH regulators nearly always come from
> the output of other RPMH regulators (or always-on regulators) and RPMH
> firmware is initialized with this knowledge and handles enabling (and
> adjusting the voltage of) input supplies. While we could model the
> parent/child relationship of the regulators in Linux, many boards
> don't bother since it adds extra overhead.
> 
> Let's change the regulator core to make things work again. Now if we
> fail to get the input or output voltage we'll still call into
> get_optimum_mode() and we'll just pass error codes in for input_uV
> and/or output_uV parameters.
> 
> Since no existing regulator drivers even look at input_uV and
> output_uV we don't need to add this error handling anywhere right
> now. We'll add some comments in the core so that it's obvious that (if
> regulator drivers care) it's up to them to add the checks.
> 
> Reported-by: Andrew Halaney <ahalaney@redhat.com>
> Fixes: efb0cb50c427 ("regulator: qcom-rpmh: Implement get_optimum_mode(), not set_load()")
> Signed-off-by: Douglas Anderson <dianders@chromium.org>

Tested-by: Andrew Halaney <ahalaney@redhat.com>

Thanks again for the quick patches!
 - Andrew