[RFC PATCH 0/5] Add smp booting support for Qualcomm ARMv8 SoCs

Rob Clark
2015-04-16T17:17:32Z

On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 11:21 AM, Catalin Marinas
<catalin.marinas@arm.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 11:01:17AM -0400, Rob Clark wrote:
>> On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 9:34 AM, Catalin Marinas
>> <catalin.marinas@arm.com> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 05:48:48PM -0400, Rob Clark wrote:
>> >> Just speaking as an outsider to this topic, but seems like most/all
>> >> tablets/phones/etc ship with signed firmware. Which means for most of
>> >> the population, upgrading the firmware to a new version which did
>> >> support the standard (assuming it existed), isn't really an option on
>> >> our devices, any more than fixing buggy acpi tables is on our
>> >> laptops..
>> >
>> > I wouldn't expect most population to build their own kernels on
>> > tablets/phones. And even if you could install a custom kernel, mainline
>> > rarely runs on such devices because of tons of out of tree patches (just
>> > look at the Nexus 9 patches that Kumar pointed at; even ignoring the
>> > booting protocol they are extremely far from an upstreamable form).
>>
>> my point being, that it happens some times.. for example John Stultz's
>> work on nexus7:
>>
>> https://plus.google.com/111524780435806926688/posts/DzvpMLmzQiQ
>>
>> If this had been a year or two in the future and on some 64b
>> snapdragon, and support for devices with non-PSCI fw is rejected, then
>> he'd be stuck.
>>
>> There are folks who are working to get saner, more-upstream kernels
>> working on devices.. and improving kernel infrastructure for
>> device-needs (well, in my neck of the woods, there is drm/kms atomic
>> and dsi/panel framework stuff.. I'm sure other similar things in other
>> kernel domains). And it seems like that is a good thing to encourage,
>> rather than stymie.
>
> I'm not looking to discourage individuals trying to get upstream support
> for older boards. Should the need arise, we'll look at options which may
> or may not include kernel changes (e.g. wrap the kernel in a shim).

I had wondered about that, but afaiu psci is a smc interface, and I
would assume bootloader drops you out of secure mode before entering
the kernel or whatever comes after first stage bootloader if you are
chain-loading? So wasn't sure even how that could work.. (ofc, well
outside of my areas so I could be quite off base)

If there is a workaround, then I am much less concerned, and would
rather talk about that :-)

> But I'm definitely going to discourage companies like Qualcomm
> deliberately ignoring the existing booting protocols while trying to get
> their code upstream. This patch series is posted by Qualcomm without
> providing any technical reason on why they don't want to/couldn't use
> PSCI (well, I guess there is no technical reason but they may not care
> much about mainline either).

Sure.. just trying to make sure the wrong people don't end up being
the ones that suffer. I would assume/expect that it is at least
possible for qcom to change firmware/bootloader for their dev boards
and future devices and whatnot, whether they grumble about it or not.
But I guess most of what the general public has are devices w/ signed
fw, which is why "go fix your firmware" is an option that sets off
alarm bells for me.

I guess the first device where this will matter to me and a large
group of community folks would be the dragonboard 410c.. *hopefully*
it does not require signed firmware or at least qcom could make
available signed firmware which supports psci..

BR,
-R

> --
> Catalin