Re: [PATCH v10 0/8] Introduce on-chip interconnect API

[Evan Green <evgreen@chromium.org>]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 10:03 AM Georgi Djakov <georgi.djakov@linaro.org> wrote:
>
> Modern SoCs have multiple processors and various dedicated cores (video, gpu,
> graphics, modem). These cores are talking to each other and can generate a
> lot of data flowing through the on-chip interconnects. These interconnect
> buses could form different topologies such as crossbar, point to point buses,
> hierarchical buses or use the network-on-chip concept.
>
> These buses have been sized usually to handle use cases with high data
> throughput but it is not necessary all the time and consume a lot of power.
> Furthermore, the priority between masters can vary depending on the running
> use case like video playback or CPU intensive tasks.
>
> Having an API to control the requirement of the system in terms of bandwidth
> and QoS, so we can adapt the interconnect configuration to match those by
> scaling the frequencies, setting link priority and tuning QoS parameters.
> This configuration can be a static, one-time operation done at boot for some
> platforms or a dynamic set of operations that happen at run-time.
>
> This patchset introduce a new API to get the requirement and configure the
> interconnect buses across the entire chipset to fit with the current demand.
> The API is NOT for changing the performance of the endpoint devices, but only
> the interconnect path in between them.

For what it's worth, we are ready to land this in Chrome OS. I think
this series has been very well discussed and reviewed, hasn't changed
much in the last few spins, and is in good enough shape to use as a
base for future patches. Georgi's also done a great job reaching out
to other SoC vendors, and there appears to be enough consensus that
this framework will be usable by more than just Qualcomm. There are
also several drivers out on the list trying to add patches to use this
framework, with more to come, so it made sense (to us) to get this
base framework nailed down. In my experiments this is an important
piece of the overall power management story, especially on systems
that are mostly idle.

I'll continue to track changes to this series and we will ultimately
reconcile with whatever happens upstream, but I thought it was worth
sending this note to express our "thumbs up" towards this framework.

-Evan