Re: [RFC v2 6/8] gpu: drm: tegra: Remove redundant host1x

["Terje Bergström" <tbergstrom-DDmLM1+adcrQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org>]

On 21.12.2012 23:19, Stephen Warren wrote:
> * There's host1x hardware.
> 
> * There's a low-level driver just for host1x itself; the host1x driver.
> 
> * There's a high-level driver for the entire host1x complex of devices.
> That is tegradrm. There may be more high-level drivers in the future
> (e.g. v4l2 camera driver if it needs to aggregate a bunch of host1x
> sub-devices liek tegradrm does).

tegradrm is a driver for a couple of the host1x clients, namely DC and
HDMI, and now adding 2D.

> * The presence of the host1x DT node logically implies that both the two
> drivers in the previous two points should be instantiated.
> 
> * Linux instantiates a single device per DT node.
> 
> * So, it's host1x's responsibility to instantiate the other device(s). I
> think it's reasonable for the host1x driver to know exactly what
> features the host1x HW complex supports; raw host1x access being one,
> and the higher level concept of a tegradrm being another. So, it's
> reasonable for host1x to trigger the instantiation of tegradrm.

tegradrm has drivers for each device that it controls, so tegradrm via
kernel device-driver model instantiates them. host1x driver doesn't need
to do that.

> * If DRM core didn't stomp on the device object's drvdata (or whichever
> field it is), I would recommend not creating a dummy device at all, but
> rather having the host1x driver directly implement multiple driver
> interfaces. There are many examples like this already in the kernel,
> e.g. combined GPIO+IRQ driver, combined GPIO+IRQ+pinctrl driver, etc.

This is the architecture that would imply host1x instantiating
everything, and DRM being a subcomponent of host1x driver. But we didn't
choose to go there. We agreed to have tegradrm and host1x drivers separate.

Terje