Hi Judith,

On 7/11/2026 4:34 AM, Judith Mendez wrote:
Some board designs have slow RC circuits on GPIO outputs controlled by
PCA953X I2C expanders. On some board designs, pin voltage transitions
can take significant time after I2C write command completes.

Add an optional "gpio-settle-delay-ms" device tree property for the
pca953x driver to add a delay after I2C write if specified, allowing to
compensate for slow RC circuits.

Signed-off-by: Judith Mendez <[email protected]>
---
  drivers/gpio/pca953x_gpio.c | 8 ++++++++
  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)

diff --git a/drivers/gpio/pca953x_gpio.c b/drivers/gpio/pca953x_gpio.c
index 965a5fcf30b..54b957069c9 100644
--- a/drivers/gpio/pca953x_gpio.c
+++ b/drivers/gpio/pca953x_gpio.c
@@ -28,6 +28,7 @@
  #include <dm/device_compat.h>
  #include <dt-bindings/gpio/gpio.h>
  #include <linux/bitops.h>
+#include <linux/delay.h>
#define PCA953X_INPUT 0
  #define PCA953X_OUTPUT          1
@@ -89,6 +90,7 @@ static const struct pca95xx_reg pca957x_regs = {
   * @reg_output: array to hold the value of output registers
   * @reg_direction: array to hold the value of direction registers
   * @regs: struct to hold the registers addresses
+ * @settle_delay_ms: GPIO pin settle delay in milliseconds
   */
  struct pca953x_info {
        struct udevice *dev;
@@ -100,6 +102,7 @@ struct pca953x_info {
        u8 reg_output[MAX_BANK];
        u8 reg_direction[MAX_BANK];
        const struct pca95xx_reg *regs;
+       u32 settle_delay_ms;
  };
static int pca953x_write_single(struct udevice *dev, int reg, u8 val,
@@ -116,6 +119,9 @@ static int pca953x_write_single(struct udevice *dev, int 
reg, u8 val,
                return ret;
        }
+ if (info->settle_delay_ms)
+               mdelay(info->settle_delay_ms);
+
        return 0;
  }

This delay is placed inside pca953x_write_single(), which is called by both
pca953x_set_value() and pca953x_set_direction(). This results in a double delay
for every direction_output call, which I think is unintended.

Additionally, a settle delay is only meaningful after changing an output
level — it represents the time for the pin voltage to physically settle (e.g.
through an RC circuit). Firing it on direction register writes does not make
sense. The delay should be scoped only to pca953x_set_value().

@@ -333,6 +339,8 @@ static int pca953x_probe(struct udevice *dev) info->bank_count = DIV_ROUND_UP(info->gpio_count, BANK_SZ); + info->settle_delay_ms = dev_read_u32_default(dev, "gpio-settle-delay-ms", 0);
+

As Francesco mentioned, adding u-boot specifc properties causes the U-Boot DT to diverge from the Linux DT, which violates U-Boot's policy of maintaining DT
compatibility with Linux.

        ret = pca953x_read_regs(dev, info->regs->output, info->reg_output);
        if (ret) {
                dev_err(dev, "Error reading output register\n");

Given that the delay is due to a slow RC circuit on the output, I would suggest
looking at the gpio-delay (gpio-delay.c, binding at gpio-delay.yaml). It is
designed precisely for this scenario:
"This binding describes an electrical setup where setting a GPIO output is
delayed by some external setup, e.g. RC circuit."

Regards,
Tanmay

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