[alsa-devel] [PATCH 0/3] ASoC: Enable a new IC master mode: bcm2835<=>IC<=>cs42xx8

[hias@horus.com (Matthias Reichl)]

On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 10:21:04PM +0100, Emmanuel Fust? wrote:
> Le 16/03/2017 ? 23:14, Matt Flax a ?crit :
> >
> >
> >On 17/03/17 08:27, Lars-Peter Clausen wrote:
> >>On 03/16/2017 09:51 PM, Matt Flax wrote:
> >>>
> >>>On 16/03/17 06:01, Mark Brown wrote:
> >>>>On Tue, Feb 28, 2017 at 09:59:29AM +0000, Charles Keepax wrote:
> >>>>>On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 12:51:08PM +0100, Matthias Reichl wrote:
> >>>>>>>I have a bcm2835 (Pi 2 and 3) SoC here. It is producing
> >>>>>>>multichannel (8
> >>>>>>>out,
> >>>>>>>6 in) audio. In ALSA we call that DSP mode - right ?!
> >>>>>>No. DSP modes are protocol/timing specifications as I2S, PDP,
> >>>>>>S/PDIF, ...
> >>>>>>You can look these up in datasheets and if a chip implements such a
> >>>>>>protocol you can be sure that it adheres to that standard - i.e. it
> >>>>>>will sync the frames to the pulses on LRclk.
> >>>>>I agree with the thoughts in this thread really if the AP doesn't
> >>>>>actually support DSP A mode we shouldn't add DSP A mode.
> >>>>The trouble here is that this isn't 100% clear, the specifications of
> >>>>the DSP modes are such that only one edge in the LRCLK matters and so
> >>>>providing you're doing mono or have exact clocking they interoperate
> >>>>perfectly well.  We already frequently do similar things the other
> >>>>way,
> >>>>most of the programmable serial ports can't actually do I2S modes
> >>>>properly and rely on exact clocking to get things right when operating
> >>>>as I2S since they only sync on one edge (though they can generally
> >>>>generate the clocks correctly when operating as master, they just
> >>>>don't
> >>>>pay attention to the left/right switch edge).
> >>>>
> >>>>That said unless we're doing something with the data layout or similar
> >>>>configuration there's a fairly strong case for putting the mangling
> >>>>for
> >>>>this in the core, something like just falling back to I2S mode if we
> >>>>set
> >>>>DSP A and so on.  Which would be a lot nicer if we actually got
> >>>>round to
> >>>>putting mode capability information in the drivers.
> >>>I agree, the data layout is already configurable in the bcm2835_i2s.c
> >>>platform driver. We can already use the "snd_soc_dai_set_bclk_ratio"
> >>>function to manage word offsets in our machine drivers.
> >>>
> >>>There is nothing which says that the bcm2835 SoC is I2S restricted in
> >>>any
> >>>way. In fact, the reference document says quite the opposite.
> >>>
> >>>In the reference "BCM2835 ARM Peripherals" pdf, they call the audio
> >>>system
> >>>an "APB peripheral". They are saying that it is reconfigurable and
> >>>part of
> >>>the AMBA family of interconnect schemes.
> >>>
> >>>As far as the bcm2835_i2s platform driver goes, it has implemented an
> >>>AMBA
> >>>protocol, where audio words are counted from the LR clock onset - for
> >>>some
> >>>reason people are insisting this is an I2S bus. Really our
> >>>implementation is
> >>>not I2S at all, because word onsets are programmable and flexible in
> >>>the
> >>>bcm2835_i2s.c driver.
> >>AMBA/APB is the interface which connects the peripheral to the system
> >>memory
> >>bus. It is the interface over which the CPU does configuration register
> >>writes. This has nothing and absolutely nothing to do with the I2S
> >>interface
> >>that is also implemented by the peripheral that is used to stream audio
> >>to
> >>and from external components.
> >>
> >
> >Their (BCM reference) document [1] specifically states "It supports many
> >classic PCM formats including I2S".
> >
> >Do agree with Mark's statement "the specifications of the DSP modes are
> >such that only one edge in the LRCLK matters" ?
> >
> >If we look at the bcm2835 platform driver setup, it is concerned with bit
> >clock counting to specify the audio data for both of the AMBA/APB channels
> >from serial bitstream into memory. It has two channels into memory,
> >however "it supports many classic PCM formats" ... my vote for one classic
> >format is DSP mode !
> >
> >Do you see a problem with that ?
> >
> >thanks
> >Matt
> >[1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BCM2835-ARM-Peripherals.pdf
> >_______________________________________________
> >
> Re-reading this document, the bcm2835 PCM IP block SHOULD support real DSP
> mode, with one BCLK pulsed LRCLK, zero BCLK delay etc...
> It just need to be properly setup.

I've re-read the document, too, last week and noticed the framesync
registers - sorry, I had completely forgotten about these. I guess it
should be possible to configure the bcm2835 to DSP mode but it'd still be
limited to 2 channel setups - the hardware only has 2 channel position
registers for each direction.

> According to the same document, you could program the bmc up to 16 32bits
> channels when in master mode, so I suspect that you could go up to this
> limit in slave mode.
> But as it is designed, it could only use up to two of any channels among the
> 16.

I'm not quite sure if I can follow you on this - how would you
configure 16 channels when there are only 2 channel position registers?

With bclk ratio eg set to 16*32=512 BCM2835 will only transmit 2*32
bits of data (at configurable bit positions), the remaining 448
bits will be zero.

so long,

Hias