Re: [PATCH v5 1/6] I2C: i2c-smbus: add device tree support

Phil Reid
2016-09-30T07:55:25Z

G'day Rob,

On 24/09/2016 03:42, Rob Herring wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 04:41:09PM +0800, Phil Reid wrote:
>> From: Andrea Merello <andrea.merello@gmail.com>
>>
>> According to Documentation/i2c/smbus-protocol, a smbus controller driver
>> that wants to hook-in smbus extensions support, can call
>> i2c_setup_smbus_alert(). There are very few drivers that are currently
>> doing this.
>>
>> However the i2c-smbus module can also work with any
>> smbus-extensions-unaware I2C controller, as long as we provide an extra
>> IRQ line connected to the I2C bus ALARM signal.
>>
>> This patch makes it possible to go this way via DT. Note that the DT node
>> will indeed describe a (little) piece of HW, that is the routing of the
>> ALARM signal to an IRQ line (so it seems a fair DT use to me, but RFC).
>>
>> Note that AFAICT, by design, i2c-smbus module pretends to be an I2C slave
>> with address 0x0C (that is the alarm response address), and IMHO this is
>> quite consistent with usage in the DT as a I2C child node.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Andrea Merello <andrea.merello@gmail.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Phil Reid <preid@electromag.com.au>
>> ---
>> Documentation/devicetree/bindings/i2c/i2c-smbus.txt | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
>> drivers/i2c/i2c-smbus.c | 20 +++++++++++++++-----
>> 2 files changed, 35 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
>> create mode 100644 Documentation/devicetree/bindings/i2c/i2c-smbus.txt
>>
>> diff --git a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/i2c/i2c-smbus.txt b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/i2c/i2c-smbus.txt
>> new file mode 100644
>> index 0000000..da83127
>> --- /dev/null
>> +++ b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/i2c/i2c-smbus.txt
>> @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
>> +* i2c-smbus extensions
>> +
>> +Required Properties:
>> + - compatible: Must contain "smbus_alert"
>> + - interrupts: The irq line for smbus ALERT signal
>> + - reg: I2C slave address. Set to 0x0C (alert response address).
>
> This is not right. The 0xC address is special, not an actual device
> address. The bindings should just have the actual device's compatible
> string and address.
>
>> +
>> +Note: The i2c-smbus module registers itself as a slave I2C device. Whenever
>> +a smbus controller directly support smbus extensions (and its driver supports
>> +this), there is no need to add anything special to the DT. Otherwise, for using
>> +i2c-smbus with any smbus-extensions-unaware I2C controllers, you need to
>> +route the smbus ALARM signal to an extra IRQ line, thus you need to describe
>> +this in the DT.
>
> Now, I guess what you need in the kernel is a common handler for
> SMBALERT# and to know which interrupt line is SMBALERT#.
>
> The drivers should know this. A given h/w device will or will not handle
> the "SMB Alert Response Address". So the drivers should register their
> interrupt with the I2C/SMBus core.
>
> If a controller handles the SMBALERT, then it should make itself an
> interrupt controller and that's what slave devices 'interrupts' property
> will point to.
>

Could a property be added to each i2c bus segment.
Something like the following.

interrupt-parent = <&irqsrc>;
interrupts = <0>;
interrupt-names = "smbalert";

Then the i2c core code could look for this in each segment, either in the parent segment
or a mux segment and create the smbalert common handler for each segment as required.

--
Regards
Phil Reid