Re: [PATCH 00/15] Intel IPU6 and IPU6 input system drivers

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

Hi Claus,

On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 02:52:35PM +0200, claus.stovgaard@gmail.com wrote:
> On Mon, 2023-08-21 at 15:19 +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 12:07:59PM +0200, Claus Stovgaard wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2023-08-21 at 08:55 +0200, Claus Stovgaard wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > Looking forward to try your branch. Looks much cleaner, and would be
> > > > nice to get working :)
> > > 
> > > I got it to work on Dell XPS 9320.
> > 
> > I'm glad to hear this ! Even if PSYS support will be needed to make the
> > IPU6 truly usable, it is a very nice step in the right direction.
> > 
> > Would you be interested in adding initial support for the IPU6 in
> > libcamera ? :-) Given that only the ISYS is currently available, and
> > given the simplicity of the hardware, it may be as easy as a single line
> > addition.
> 
> Hi Laurent.
> 
> Thanks for your offer - it might come in handy to have libcamera
> support, but I don't need it right now.
> 
> My use case is a bit special. I am working as Embedded Engineer for
> Ambu A/S, where we have 2 display units, named aView2 and aBox2, for
> single use endoscopy.
> 
> https://youtu.be/eDcSrHxzZ70?t=14
> 
> Those units is based on the intel Apollo Lake with IPU4, where only the
> isys part of IPU4 is used, as a FPGA in front of the Apollo Lake is
> used for image processing. So the image stream is sent to the Apollo
> Lake as RGB data - and is using the IPU4 isys as DMA. E.g. like below.
> 
> scope -> FPGA -> tc358748 -> IPU4-> memory

Out of curiosity, is this because the image processing requirements are
very device-specific, or was that done to work around the fact that the
IPU4 doesn't provide a good ISP driver ?

> We need to support this for newer kernels, then provided from intel
> (4.14 / 4.19)

*OUCH*. Seriously ?? :-(

> and looking at the code, it seems like a better option to
> base it on this IPU6 isys driver and extend it to cover IPU4 isys also.
> 
> So we are being inspired by the provided 4.14 / 4.19 kernel, and then
> work on the IPU6 codebase.
> 
> Our current status is that my coworker has the Buttress to load the
> firmware on IPU4, and we will continue work from there.
> 
> My end goal would be that an upstream vanilla kernel is able to support
> the isys part of IPU4, and the complete IPU6.

It would be very nice to have an upstream driver for the IPU4 CSI-2
receivers indeed. Looking forward to seeing one :-)

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart