Re: [PATCH v10 07/10] OF: Introduce helper function for getting PCI domain_nr

[Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>]

On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 10:16:04AM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Tuesday 09 September 2014 09:46:21 Liviu Dudau wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 06:54:21AM +0100, Yijing Wang wrote:
> > > >>> on new requests. This function gets called quite a lot and I'm trying not to
> > > >>> make it too heavy weight.
> > > >>
> > > >> Generally, nothing should be accessing the same DT value frequently.
> > > >> It should get cached somewhere.
> > > >>
> > > > 
> > > > The problem appears for DTs that don't have the pci-domain info. Then the cached
> > > > value is left at the default non-valid value and attempts to rescan the DT will
> > > > be made every time the function is called.
> > > > 
> > > >> I don't really understand how domains are used so it's hard to provide
> > > >> a recommendation here. Do domains even belong in the DT?
> > > > 
> > > > ACPI calls them segments and the way Bjorn explained it to me at some moment was
> > > > that it was an attempt to split up a bus in different groups (or alternatively,
> > > > merge a few busses together). To be honest I haven't seen systems where the domain
> > > > is anything other than zero, but JasonG (or maybe Benjamin) were floating an
> > > > idea of using the domain number to identify physical slots.
> > > 
> > > PCI domain(or named segment) is provided by firmware, in ACPI system, we evaluated it
> > > by method "_SEG". in IA64 with ACPI, PCI hostbridge driver retrieves the domain from ACPI,
> > > if it's absent, the default domain is zero. So I wonder why in DTS, if it's absent, we get
> > > a auto increment domain value.
> > 
> > Because you can have more than one hostbridge (rare, but not impossible) and unless you
> > want to join the two segments, you might want to give it a different domain.
> 
> I think you misunderstood the question. The difference is that in ACPI you
> are required to specify the domain, while in DT it is optional with your
> implementation.
> 
> I think in general it would be nice if we could mandate that in DT you also
> have to always provide a domain number, however the problem is that we can't
> change the existing DTB files that people are using that do not specify a
> domain.
> 
> We could possibly make this an architecture specific setting though and
> mandate that all ARM64 platforms have to set it, while ARM32 does not need
> it.

We can assume that if a domain is not specified and there is a single
top level PCIe node, the domain defaults to 0. Are there any arm32
platforms that require multiple domains (and do not specify a number in
the DT)?

-- 
Catalin