Re: [PATCH v3 3/3] hwmon: Driver for Texas Instruments INA238

[Nathan Rossi <nathan@nathanrossi.com>]

On Mon, 1 Nov 2021 at 13:48, Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net> wrote:
>
> On 10/31/21 7:20 PM, Nathan Rossi wrote:
> [ ... ]
> >>> +
> >>> +     if (attr != hwmon_in_max && attr != hwmon_in_min)
> >>> +             return -EOPNOTSUPP;
> >>> +
> >>> +     /* convert decimal to register value */
> >>> +     switch (channel) {
> >>> +     case 0:
> >>> +             /* signed value, clamp to max range +/-163 mV */
> >>> +             regval = clamp_val(val, -163, 163);
> >>> +             regval = (regval * 1000L * (4 - (int)data->gain + 1)) /
> >>
> >> nit: The typecast "(int)" is not needed here.
> >
> > Due to the unsigned type of gain, it causes promotion of regval (and
> > the rest of the numerator) to unsigned long which causes issues with
> > negative numbers on the divide. It makes more sense for gain to be an
> > int to begin with, I will change it to int to avoid the need for type
> > casting.
> >
>
> Are you sure ? I initially thought that as well and wrote a little test
> program with that expression, but it didn't do the promotion to unsigned.
>

It definitely calculates incorrectly at run time (on an arm 32-bit
platform), looking at the gcc output from -fdump-tree-original reveals
some more insight. Which is that the promotion to long overrides the
unsigned (from the 1000L) on long=64 but not on long=32.

Where regval is int, and gain is unsigned int (u32).

regval = (regval * 1000L * (4 - gain + 1)) / 5;
-> armv7-a (invalid)
regval = (int) ((((long unsigned int) regval * (long unsigned int) (5
- gain)) * 1000) / 5);
-> x86-64 (valid result)
regval = (int) ((unsigned int) (gain * 4294967096 + 1000) * (unsigned
int) regval);

note: 4294967096 is -800, 1000 * (4 - gain + 1) => (-800 * gain) + 1000

Slight variation without the 1000 being long.

regval = (regval * 1000 * (4 - gain + 1)) / 5;
-> armv7-a (invalid)
regval = (int) ((((unsigned int) regval * (5 - gain)) * 1000) / 5);
-> x86-64 (invalid)
regval = (int) ((((unsigned int) regval * (5 - gain)) * 1000) / 5);

regval = (regval * 1000LL * (4 - gain + 1)) / 5;
-> armv7-a (valid)
regval = (int) ((unsigned int) (gain * 4294967096 + 1000) * (unsigned
int) regval);
-> x86-64 (valid)
regval = (int) ((unsigned int) (gain * 4294967096 + 1000) * (unsigned
int) regval);

I think it still makes sense to change gain to be int, and avoid the
unsigned type issues.

Regards,
Nathan