Re: Trouble with sound/mips/au1x00.c AC97 driver

[Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2007 at 06:35:04PM +0300, Sergei Shtylyov wrote:

> >>It might be ignorance on my part, but aren't au_sync()'s needed here?
> 
> >My ignorance too.. What's au_sync()? Something to writeback/invalidate the
> >cache?
> 
>    It's "memory barrier" (SYNC instruction).

For the general MIPS case (Alchemy may provide guarantees I don't know of)
a SYNC instruction is not sufficient to ensure that a write has actually
been reached by the device.  It may just like on PCI take a read from the
same device again:

   au1000->ac97_ioport->config = AC97C_SG | AC97C_SYNC;
   au1000->ac97_ioport->config;
   udelay(100);
   au1000->ac97_ioport->config = 0x0;

to ensure that all preceding write have actually made it.  That also means
that any use of the SYNC instruction may well be just an attempt to paper
over a bug.

  Ralf