Re: [PATCH 1/2 v1] davinci: support disabling modem status interrupts on SOC UARTS

[Michael Williamson <michael.williamson@criticallink.com>]

Hi Kevin...

On 01/05/2011 07:26 AM, Michael Williamson wrote:
> On the da850/omap-l138/am18x family of SoCs, up to three on chip UARTS may be
> configured.  These peripherals support the standard Tx/Rx signals as well as
> CTS/RTS hardware flow control signals.  The pins on these SOC's associated with
> these signals are multiplexed; e.g., the pin providing UART0_TXD capability
> also provides SPI0 chip select line 5 output capability.  The configuration of
> the pin multiplexing occurs during platform initialization (or by earlier
> bootloader operations).
> 
> There is a problem with the multiplexing implementation on these SOCs.  Only
> the output and output enable portions of the I/O section of the pin are
> multiplexed.  All peripheral input functions remain connected to a given pin
> regardless of configuration.
> 
> In many configurations of these parts, providing a UART with Tx/Rx capability
> is needed, but the HW flow control capability is not.  Furthermore, the pins
> associated with the CTS inputs on these UARTS are often configured to support
> a different peripheral, and they may be active/toggling during runtime.  This
> can result in false modem status (CTS) interrupts being asserted to the 8250
> driver controlling the associated Tx/Rx pins, and will impact system
> performance.
> 
> The 8250 serial driver platform data does not provide a direct mechanism to
> tell the driver to disable modem status (i.e., CTS) interrupts for a given
> port.  As a work-around, intercept register writes to the IER and disable
> modem status interrupts.
> 
> This patch was tested using a MityDSP-L138 SOM having UART1 enabled with the
> associated CTS pin connected to a clock (configured for the AHCLKX function).
> 
> Background / problem reports related to this issue are captured in the links
> below:
> http://e2e.ti.com/support/dsp/omap_applications_processors/f/42/t/36701.aspx
> http://www.mail-archive.com/davinci-linux-open-source@linux.davincidsp.com/msg19524.html
> 
> Signed-off-by: Michael Williamson <michael.williamson@criticallink.com>
> Tested-by: Michael Williamson <michael.williamson@criticallink.com>
> ---
> This is against the linux-davinci tree.
> 
> Changes from original proposed patch:
> - instead of overriding set_termios, now override serial_out driver hook
>   and intercept writes to the MSR.
> 
> An alternate patch was proposed that modified the serial core driver and added a UPF_NO_MSR
> flag.  There was resistance to this patch.  The reasoning is that the core 8250 driver code
> should not continue to get muddied by platform hacks.
> 

I'd like to withdraw this patch.  It works, but it's inefficient and ugly, and 
I also get the feeling it isn't going to make it in it's current form anyway.

I have another patch that is limited to just the mityomapl138 platform that 
I would like to submit in place of this.  No other board appears to have this
problem, so it makes sense to constrain the fix to platform file that does.

-Mike