Re: [PATCH v7 1/6] pci: Introduce pci_register_io_range() helper function.

[Liviu Dudau <Liviu.Dudau@arm.com>]

On Mon, Apr 07, 2014 at 12:36:15PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Monday 07 April 2014 09:31:20 Liviu Dudau wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 05, 2014 at 01:19:53AM +0100, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> >
> > > Host bridges on x86 could have MMIO apertures that turn CPU memory accesses
> > > into PCI port accesses.  We could implement any number of I/O port spaces
> > > this way, by making the kernel inb()/outb()/etc. interfaces smart enough to
> > > use the memory-mapped space instead of (or in addition to) the
> > > INB/OUTB/etc. instructions.
> 
> PowerPC actually has this already, as CONFIG_PPC_INDIRECT_PIO meaning that
> access to PIO registers is bus specific, and there is also CONFIG_PPC_INDIRECT_MMIO
> for the case where MMIO access is not native.
>  
> > Right, sorry for my ignorance then: how does *currently* the device driver do
> > the I/O transfer transparent of the implementation mechanism? Or they have
> > intimate knowledge of wether the device is behind a host bridge and can do MMIO
> > or is on an ISA or CF bus and then it needs INB/OUTB ? And if we make inb/outb
> > smarter, does that mean that we need to change the drivers?
> 
> The idea of that would be to not change drivers.
> 
> My preference here would be to only have a generic function for those
> architectures that have the simple MMIO access all the time.
> 
> > > ia64 does this (see arch/ia64/include/asm/io.h for a little description)
> > > and I think maybe one or two other arches have something similar.
> > > 
> > > > Introduce a pci_register_io_range() helper function that can be used
> > > > by the architecture code to keep track of the I/O ranges described by the
> > > > PCI bindings. If the PCI_IOBASE macro is not defined that signals
> > > > lack of support for PCI and we return an error.
> > > 
> > > I don't quite see how you intend to use this, because this series doesn't
> > > include any non-stub implementation of pci_register_io_range().
> > > 
> > > Is this anything like the ia64 strategy I mentioned above?  If so, it would
> > > be really nice to unify some of this stuff.
> > 
> > After discussions with Arnd and Catalin I know have a new series that moves
> > some of the code from arm64 series into this one. I am putting it through
> > testing right know as I am going to have to depend on another series that
> > makes PCI_IOBASE defined only for architectures that do MMIO in order to
> > choose the correct default implementation for these functions. My hope is
> > that I will be able to send the series this week.
> 
> I think migrating other architectures to use the same code should be
> a separate effort from adding a generic implementation that can be
> used by arm64. It's probably a good idea to have patches to convert
> arm32 and/or microblaze.

Agree. My updated series only moves the arm64 code into framework to make the
arm64 part a noop.

Liviu

> 
> 	Arnd
> 
> 

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