[PATCH] DMA: extend documentation to provide more API details

[vinod.koul@intel.com (Vinod Koul)]

On Tue, Oct 08, 2013 at 06:34:42PM -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 3:39 AM, Vinod Koul <vinod.koul@intel.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 07, 2013 at 12:17:28PM +0100, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> >> On Mon, Oct 07, 2013 at 12:45:33PM +0200, Guennadi Liakhovetski wrote:
> >> > No, not something in the middle. I was thinking about
> >> >
> >> > (1) cookie 1-3 are submitted
> >> > (2) cookie 1 succeeds
> >> > (3) a DMA error occurs, cookies 2-3 are discarded
> > discarded using terminate_all right?
> >
> >> > (4) cookie 4 is submitted and succeeds
> >> > (5) the user requests status of cookie 2 and gets success back, AFAICS
> > No you cant!, you can only request for 4..
> >>
> >> This is a side effect of using a sequential cookie based system to indicate
> >> whether a descriptor has succeeded or not.
> > In the above case, since user calls terminate_all we can put a rule that
> > terminate should reset the cookie counter.
> > So after the terminate_all the cookies are sequentially valid!
> 
> I think you and Guennadi address this later in the thread, but I think
> cookie values should always increase.  I see nothing but trouble if
> cookie values are allowed to go backwards.
Ok, my idea was to do this in terminate_all ONLY which is complete reset for a
channel. Anything done before that should not be valid and should not e
referenced!
But am okay to drop the idea...

> > Anyways as pointed above user shouldnt check for 2, he should have removed all
> > refs till 3 before calling terminate.
> >
> >> What may be better is to change the wording here: not DMA_SUCCESS but
> >> DMA_COMPLETED.  That doesn't imply that it has been successful, merely
> >> that the DMA engine has finished with the transaction.
> > Agreed that its not indication of success but of DMA completetion. I have seen
> > cases where slave perhiphral got stuck while sending last FIFO but since DMA
> > finished transferiing to FIFO it says complete.
> >
> > Dan do you agree?
> 
> Yes, it's an indication of completion, not necessarily success.
Sure, will update this..

-- 
~Vinod