Hi Ramesh, On Tuesday 06 Dec 2016 15:41:06 Ramesh Shanmugasundaram wrote: > > On Monday 05 Dec 2016 09:57:32 Rob Herring wrote: > >> On Mon, Dec 5, 2016 at 8:40 AM, Laurent Pinchart wrote: > >>> On Monday 05 Dec 2016 08:18:34 Rob Herring wrote: > >>>> On Fri, Nov 25, 2016 at 10:55 AM, Ramesh Shanmugasundaram wrote: > >>>>> Hello DT maintainers, > >>>>> > >>>>> In one of the Renesas SoCs we have a device called DRIF (Digital > >>>>> Radio Interface) controller. A DRIF channel contains 4 external pins > >>>>> - SCK, SYNC, Data pins D0 & D1. > >>>>> > >>>>> Internally a DRIF channel is made up of two SPI slave devices > >>>>> (also called sub-channels here) that share common CLK & SYNC > >>>>> signals but have their own resource set. The DRIF channel can have > >>>>> either one of the sub-channel active at a time or both. When both > >>>>> sub-channels are active, they need to be managed together as one > >>>>> device as they share same CLK & SYNC. We plan to tie these two > >>>>> sub-channels together with a new property called "renesas,bonding". > >>>> > >>>> Is there no need to describe the master device? No GPIOs, > >>>> regulators or other sideband controls needed? If that's never > >>>> needed (which seems doubtful), then I would do something different > >>>> here probably with the master device as a child of one DRIF and > >>>> then phandles to master from the other DRIFs. Otherwise, this looks > >>>> fine to me. > >>> > >>> Here's a bit of background. > >>> > >>> The DRIF is an SPI receiver. It has three input pins, a clock line, > >>> a data line and a sync signal. The device is designed to be > >>> connected to a variety of data sources, usually plain SPI (1 data > >>> line), IIS (1 data line) but also radio tuners that output I/Q data > >>> (http://www.ni.com/tutorial/4805/en/) over two data lines. > >>> > >>> In the case of IQ each data sample is split in two I and Q values > >>> (typically 16 to 20 bits each in this case), and the values are > >>> transmitted serially over one data line each. The synchronization > >>> and clock signals are common to both data lines. The DRIF is > >>> optimized for this use case as the DRIF instances in the SoC (each > >>> of them having independent clocks, interrupts and control registers) > >>> are grouped by two, and the two instances in a group handle a single > >>> data line each but share the same clock and sync input. > >>> > >>> On the software side we need to group the I and Q values, which are > >>> DMA'ed to memory by the two DRIF instances, and make them available > >>> to userspace. The V4L2 API used here in SDR (Software Defined Radio) > >>> mode supports such use cases and exposes a single device node to > >>> userspace that allows control of the two DRIF instances as a single > >>> device. To be able to implement this we need kernel code to be aware > >>> of DRIF groups and, while binding to the DRIF instances separately, > >>> expose only one V4L2 device to userspace for each group. > >>> > >>> There's no master or slave instance from a hardware point of view, > >>> but the two instances are not interchangeable as they carry separate > >>> information. They must thus be identified at the driver level. > >> > >> By master, I meant the external master device that generates the IQ > >> data, not which of the internal DRIF blocks is a master of the other. > >> So back to my question, does the external master device need to be > >> described? I worry the answer now for a simple case is no, but then > >> later people are going to have cases needing to describe more. We need > >> to answer this question first before we can decide what this binding > >> should look like. > > > > Oh yes the external device certainly needs to be described. As it is > > controlled through a separate, general-purpose I2C or SPI controller, it > > should be a child node of that controller. The DRIF handles the data > > interface only, not the control interface of the external device. > > Yes, as Laurent mentioned, the external master will be described separately. > The data interface with the master is described through port nodes. E.g. > > port { > drif0_ep: endpoint { > remote-endpoint = <&tuner_ep>; > }; > }; > > Do we agree on this model please?
That looks good to me. > >>> Back to the DT bindings, the need to expose relationships between > >>> (mostly) independent devices is quite common nowadays. It has been > >>> solved in some cases by creating a separate DT node that does not > >>> correspond to any physical hardware and whose sole purpose is to > >>> contain phandles to devices that need to be grouped. Drivers then > >>> bind to the compatible string of that "virtual" DT node. The > >>> proposed bonding property is a different approach to solve a similar > >>> problem. Would it be worth it addressing the problem at a more > >>> general level and try to design a common solution ? > >> > >> We already have somewhat standard ways of grouping, but they are per > >> type of device (display, sound card, etc.). I'm not sure we gain much > >> standardizing across these devices and to some extent that ship has > >> sailed. Even within display subsystems, I don't think there is one > >> style that fits all. Sometimes a parent subsystem node with children > >> makes sense for the h/w. Sometimes that doesn't make sense and we have > >> the virtual node with a "ports" property (like sun8i did). I've never > >> been too happy with that style largely just because it feels like > >> we're letting DRM define the binding. However, it's generally extra > >> data that an OS could just ignore. There have also been many display > >> bindings that started out with a virtual node and we got rid of it. So > >> it's not something I like to encourage and we need to be clear when it > >> is okay or not. > >> > >> To state the problem more generally (at least when using OF graph), I > >> think the problem is simply how do we define and group multiple entry > >> points to an OF graph. Maybe these should be graph nodes themselves > >> rather than phandles to the nodes with the entry points of the graph. > > > > CC'ing Maxime Ripard for the sun8i side. > > Can we use this "bonding" property as another way of grouping similar > devices? Should I make it generic instead of "renesas,bonding"? -- Regards, Laurent Pinchart
