Re: [PATCH] [RFC] dmaengine: add fifo_size member

[Vinod Koul <vkoul@kernel.org>]

On 06-06-19, 09:19, Sameer Pujar wrote:

> > you are really going other way around about the whole picture. FWIW that
> > is how *other* folks do audio with dmaengine!
> I discussed this internally with HW folks and below is the reason why DMA
> needs
> to know FIFO size.
> 
> - FIFOs reside in peripheral device(ADMAIF), which is the ADMA interface to
> the audio sub-system.
> - ADMAIF has multiple channels and share FIFO buffer for individual
> operations. There is a provision
>   to allocate specific fifo size for each individual ADMAIF channel from the
> shared buffer.
> - Tegra Audio DMA(ADMA) architecture is different from the usual DMA
> engines, which you described earlier.
> - The flow control logic is placed inside ADMA. Slave peripheral
> device(ADMAIF) signals ADMA whenever a
>   read or write happens on the FIFO(per WORD basis). Please note that the
> signaling is per channel. There is
>   no other signaling present from ADMAIF to ADMA.
> - ADMA keeps a counter related to above signaling. Whenever a sufficient

when is signal triggered? When there is space available or some
threshold of space is reached?

> space is available, it initiates a transfer.
>   But the question is, how does it know when to transfer. This is the
> reason, why ADMA has to be aware of FIFO
>   depth of ADMAIF channel. Depending on the counters and FIFO depth, it
> knows exactly when a free space is available
>   in the context of a specific channel. On ADMA, FIFO_SIZE is just a value
> which should match to actual FIFO_DEPTH/SIZE
>   of ADMAIF channel.

That doesn't sound too different from typical dmaengine. To give an
example of a platform (and general DMAengine principles as well) I worked
on the FIFO was 16 word deep. DMA didn't knew!

Peripheral driver would signal to DMA when a threshold is reached and
DMA would send a burst controlled by src/dst_burst_size. For example if
you have a FIFO with 16 words depth, typical burst_size would be 8 words
and peripheral will configure signalling for FIFO having 8 words, so
signal from peripheral will make dma transfer 8 words.

Here the peripheral driver FIFO is important, but the driver
configures it and sets burst_size accordingly.

So can you explain me what is the difference here that the peripheral
cannot configure and use burst size with passing fifo depth?

> - Now consider two cases based on above logic,
>   * Case 1: when DMA_FIFO_SIZE > SLAVE_FIFO_SIZE
>     In this case, ADMA thinks that there is enough space available for
> transfer, when actually the FIFO data
>     on slave is not consumed yet. It would result in OVERRUN.
>   * Case 2: when DMA_FIFO_SIZE < SLAVE_FIFO_SIZE
>     This is case where ADMA won’t transfer, even though sufficient space is
> available, resulting in UNDERRUN.
> - The guideline is to program, DMA_FIFO_SIZE(on ADMA side) =
> SLAVE_FIFO_SIZE(on ADMAIF side) and hence we need a
>   way to communicate fifo size info to ADMA.

-- 
~Vinod