Hi,

On Tue, Sep 06, 2016 at 12:43:41AM +0100, André Przywara wrote:
> On 05/09/16 22:17, maxime.ripard wrote:
> 
> Hi Maxime,
> 
> thanks for your answer.
> 
> > I'm leaving aside the rest of your mail, since we apparently have a
> > very fundamental disagreement and will never reach an agreement. So,
> > let's agree to disagree.
> 
> I agree ;-)
> 
> > 
> > That being said...
> > 
> > On Mon, Sep 05, 2016 at 01:25:36AM +0100, André Przywara wrote:
> >> From thinking more about this I think we can have both approaches
> >> implemented:
> >> - An embedded design for people who either want full control or who
> >> don't care too much about the potential danger.
> >> - A server design which hides those bits from Linux, instead offers
> >> abstracted firmware interfaces to monitor (or control, if necessary) AXP
> >> functionality.
> >>
> >> The DT would then ultimately describe which version is used: A "server
> >> firmware" would switch the RSB to secure and would expose SCPI
> >> regulators and sensors in the DT. People in favour of the embedded
> >> design could load a different firmware (or somehow switch over) and use
> >> the "embedded" DT with a RSB node and have full control.
> > 
> > What I don't want is to wait for the year of SCPI on embedded
> > boards. We already wasted way too much time on this, and people are
> > asking for it.
> 
> I can see that and totally agree here.
> 
> > 
> >> I don't see how those should clash from a Linux perspective, as we just
> >> use different drivers and describe the wanted one in the DT, without
> >> having conflicting bindings.
> >>
> >> Yes, having different DTs for the same hardware may rise some eyebrows,
> >> but in the end we just describe firmware interfaces (like PSCI) and
> >> avoid describing some hardware (RSB).
> > 
> > But PSCI is actually a very good example. The implementation we have
> > right now just generates the right DT nodes if the bootloader is
> > PSCI-enabled, and the kernel just picks whatever is provided, without
> > having to actually declare anything.
> > 
> > I could imagine the same thing for SCPI. And it would even be easier
> > with sunxi-ng to modify the DT to basically drop the CCU node, and
> > insert the scpi-clocks node instead.
> > 
> > You would only need to keep the same phandle (which is trivial) and to
> > keep the same clock indices (which is not that hard either).
> > 
> > That would be the most obvious way to have things working I guess: if
> > you use an SCPI-enabled firmware, everything is just generated at
> > runtime depending on what the firmware supports.
> > 
> > And everything just works.
> 
> Excellent! You actually anticipate the suggestion I wanted to make in
> the reply to that other mail ;-)
> I guess I have no real stand against the sunxi-ng clocks anyway, since I
> seem to be the only opponent and maintainers seem to be happy with it.
> And similar to the regulator issue I think we don't clash on any binding.
> In the world I imagine the DT comes with the firmware anyway (EDK2 does
> it that way), so as long as the kernel works with both DTs ...
> 
> >> I really want to depart from this all-embedded approach which
> >> exposes every bit to Linux. So why not use the first 64-bit
> >> Allwinner chip as a test vehicle to prototype this? Could you live
> >> with a different approach living in parallel with the classic sunxi
> >> way?
> > 
> > If we don't have to maintain and ship several DTs depending on the
> > option, yes, sure.
> 
> Alright, I will try to go as far as I can with the firmware based
> approach. As SCPI services are requested by the OS, we can even use the
> very same firmware code, on a sunxi-ng based system SCPI will just never
> be used and I will try my best to keep it compatible.

Ok. I'll respin my sunxi-ng patches with a bunch of changes compared
to the first version (mostly to split the H3 and A64 drivers, as Jean
Francois and Chen-Yu suggested). Do you want to send your initial
patches on top, or should I do it?

Thanks!
Maxime

-- 
Maxime Ripard, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering
http://free-electrons.com

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