From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Thierry Reding Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 01/10] mailbox: Support blocking transfers in atomic context Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2018 21:45:23 +0100 Message-ID: <20181210204522.GA325@mithrandir> References: <20181112151853.29289-1-thierry.reding@gmail.com> <20181112151853.29289-2-thierry.reding@gmail.com> <0545f5e1-1740-2129-9d0e-5c950bd9bf74@nvidia.com> <20181129152312.GB23750@ulmo> <20181207113245.GA30719@ulmo> <20181210095229.GA15154@ulmo> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8169067990935336431==" Return-path: In-Reply-To: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: "linux-arm-kernel" Errors-To: linux-arm-kernel-bounces+linux-arm-kernel=m.gmane.org@lists.infradead.org To: Jassi Brar Cc: Devicetree List , Greg KH , mliljeberg@nvidia.com, Mikko Perttunen , talho@nvidia.com, linux-serial@vger.kernel.org, jslaby@suse.com, linux-tegra@vger.kernel.org, ppessi@nvidia.com, Jon Hunter , linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org List-Id: linux-tegra@vger.kernel.org --===============8169067990935336431== Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="nFreZHaLTZJo0R7j" Content-Disposition: inline --nFreZHaLTZJo0R7j Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 02:00:48AM +0530, Jassi Brar wrote: > On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 3:22 PM Thierry Reding = wrote: > > On Sat, Dec 08, 2018 at 11:39:05AM +0530, Jassi Brar wrote: > > > On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 5:02 PM Thierry Reding wrote: >=20 > > > > > > > > > > > > Secondly, I don't understand why you think this is an emulated cons= ole. > > > > > > > It is emulated/virtual because Linux doesn't put characters on a > > > physical bus. The data is simply handed forward to a remote entity. > > > > Okay, I understand. However, from a kernel point of view there's no > > difference between the TCU and any physical UART. Once the data is > > handed to the TCU TX mailbox, it's out of control of the TCU driver. > > Whether there's a real UART behind that or some remote processor that > > reads the data isn't really relevant. > > > That way there can be no virtual/emulated device ? Virtual/emulated I interpret as purely implemented in software. That is within the Linux kernel. Once you leave the domain of the kernel it's no longer under the complete control of the kernel. So where exactly it goes doesn't matter, it's pretty much the same as a hardware device from the kernel's perspective. But I guess you could define this differently. > > > > > > The 'flush' api is going to have no use other than implement > > > busy-waits. I am afraid people are simply going to take it easy and > > > copy the busy-waits from the test/verification codes. > > > "discouraging" seldom works because the developer comes with the > > > failproof excuse "the h/w doesn't provide any other way". Frankly I > > > would like to push back on such designs. > > > > I certainly approve of that stance. > > > > However, I'd like to reiterate that the TCU design does in fact support > > "another way". If you look at the mailbox driver implementation (in the > > drivers/mailbox/tegra-hsp.c driver), you'll see that it does support an > > interrupt driven mode. After you had reviewed Mikko's earliest proposal > > that was indeed implementing busy looping exclusively we both set out > > to properly implement interrupt support. This took quite a while to do > > because of some gaps in the documentation, but we eventually got it to > > work properly. And then it was discovered that it was all a waste of > > effort because the console driver couldn't make use of it anyway. Well, > > I should say "waste of effort" because I'm still happy that the proper > > implementation exists and we can use it under the right circumstances. > > > > So, at least in this particular case, it is not the hardware or firmware > > design that's flawed or was taking any shortcuts. It's really just the > > particular use-case of the console that doesn't allow us to make use of > > the right implementation, which is why we have to resort to the inferior > > method of busy-looping. > > > I am not complaining about the hardware, but the firmware. > It is essential we dump logs during early boot but the platform(Linux) > doesn't have access to serial port. All the firmware allows is 24bits > per transfer!! We could do better. Hardware UARTs don't usually have much more FIFO space than that either. > A smarter option could have been Linux simply placing characters in > the shmem ring-buffer, while the remote consuming (and then poisoning) > the ring buffer upon 'hint' from Linux. I don't think that would've been much smarter, especially not in this case. As we discussed earlier, no matter how large you make the ring- buffer you can always run into situations where you overflow it. The ring-buffer implementation is also a lot more complicated and error- prone. Plus there is the fact that in this particular case we actually don't want buffering because the buffer may hide important information in case of a crash. Thierry --nFreZHaLTZJo0R7j Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAABCAAdFiEEiOrDCAFJzPfAjcif3SOs138+s6EFAlwO0FgACgkQ3SOs138+ s6FNwxAAks4atc+moEEvQlBD4akwevUhs5d+R4j/kfaLvYHl1FO3W+5WWubuGgEk TmVH6qu4eMR5bdory957u+zFaHG7iv8sl4JRxZO1jAvqOhDGOLTkzAtkhMpo+YC8 uoh/nR+9Z60TMkQvY53rR2bL023f055Le2LnliTud9d6EPcYoms+XJATpI3PPcvv fOraeGFHFYvj5DtScgjaTEDeNmFSHXwWhoW5MCfXvzxmGLsIy8iGPM2ssON/GCLy JClKVMJTEhtwNzGfq5hSAWerEprjuPPrWWKGH5mBnw1n0jeYerL44Bq9Q5Q9sS2w MaEH1tZj+chk+22+iwtWbaAr4+XztJBXq6xLpTLxix/WriM8N1HrjMkZLEv3/efX g95ygwmf1N3XOXHVd5EZYpExdq9FCKjCQaJ+JDEQQgSdW2oTP0hrkrLswz+MPx9j vA7HmununHhNO5m5mMQAKcuQCkSbBSJosHyzzpzrzVFwSYXUOJlncQgWhSxJyiIY VuxAulqBQohfJ50LrgXjJBXiUZ1UGL2dBAt3pvDN0Vjjb4ZZ6qu9rwK1RYT3cQZ6 Hb1u7k21AD9tLyTCVBb+Bc8MBHN48LPh6bR3+nTSIVH0BEJoLyuPuMvHB6iyZBYI WGlW8pO9YYRSqUnMZg9DV3u2xTJcDJjYejmkUvpchAo8DnKKLXk= =yfoC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nFreZHaLTZJo0R7j-- --===============8169067990935336431== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline _______________________________________________ linux-arm-kernel mailing list linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-arm-kernel --===============8169067990935336431==--