Re: [PATCH RFC v7 0/9] firmware: arm_scmi: vendors: Qualcomm Generic Vendor Extensions

[Pragnesh Papaniya <pragnesh.papaniya@oss.qualcomm.com>]

On 27-Jun-26 7:43 PM, Sudeep Holla wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 25, 2026 at 10:57:40AM +0530, Pragnesh Papaniya wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 23-Jun-26 2:17 PM, Sudeep Holla wrote:
>>> On Fri, Jun 19, 2026 at 06:01:23PM +0530, Pragnesh Papaniya wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 16-Jun-26 1:57 PM, Sudeep Holla wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Not sure if it was discussed in the previous versions or not, it would be
>>>>> good if you can capture why some of bus scaling doesn't work with the existing
>>>>> SCMI performance protocol and the monitors don't fit the MPAM mode.
>>>>>
>>>>> Please capture them in 1/9 as a motivation for this vendor protocol. It will
>>>>> then help to understand it better as I am still struggling to. Sorry for that.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the input!
>>>>
>>>> SCMI perf protocol exports perf domains to kernel where kernel can set
>>>> the frequency but here the scaling governor runs on the SCP while kernel
>>>> just observes frequency changes made by remote governor.
>>>
>>> OK if it is sort of read-only w.r.t kernel, why not perf domain notifications
>>> work to consume the change done by the SCMI platform.
>>>
>>> And why do you have set operations in the vendor protocol being proposed then.
>>> It all looks like something just cooked up to make things work. I need
>>> detailed reasoning as why the existing perf protocol can't work considering
>>> all the existing notifications in place.
>>
>> Please do take another look at the documentation and driver changes to see
>> how it all comes together, since it's apparent that we use SET operation for
>> a ton of things. Taking another stab at explaining how the MEMLAT uses all
>> the ops exposed by the vendor protocol.
>>
> 
> Sure I will have a look at the documentation again and sorry if I missed
> anything. But in general I would expect the document to be self-explanatory
> and not having to look at the driver on how it is used to understand the
> firmware interface. Please make sure of that if not already.
> 
>> We use the SET operation to pass on various tuneables (IPM CEIL, stall floors,
>> write-back filter, freq-scale params, adaptive low/high freq, sample ms),
>> the core-freq -> mem-freq map, and min/max clamps) required to run the
>> MEMLAT algorithm on the SCP. You might ask why can't we have these values
>> stored somewhere on the SCP itself?
> 
> Exactly, thanks for saving a round trip.
> 
>> We would like to but all of these are tuneable values, that can change for
>> various boards for the same SoC.
>>
> 
> Sure and where do these boards get these values from ? I assume device tree ?
> If so, are the fixed and can be done once at boot ?

There are no memlat tunables in DT (We tried to have in device tree in the earlier
revisions but they introduced unnecessary complexity). They are in kernel structs (see 7/9),
fixed per SoC/board variant and pushed to the SCP exactly once at probe. The driver
walks the selected config, sends the event maps, freq maps, tuneables and min/max
clamps via SET, and then issues START. Any further SET traffic is limited to a sub-set
of tuneables like changing sample_ms, limiting max_freq that the devfreq framework
supports.

> 
>> The START/STOP operations are meant to start/stop the algorithm, in this case
>> the bus scaling algorithm.
>>
> 
> Yes you need to add more details on that algorithm. Can firmware take random
> strings as input. I guess not. Please list the valid strings and explain them.
> Filter invalid strings in the driver if only handful of values are valid.

Thanks, will add a filter that just accepts valid strings in the next re-spin.

> 
>> We use the GET operation to get the current frequency of memory that we
>> are trying to scale. It can be also used to read back all the parameters
>> that we are trying to set. Another thing to note is that exposing the current
>> frequency to the userspace was something that the community wanted.
>>
> 
> More fun, user ABI involved, so the firmware interface needs to be as clear
> as possible.
> 
>> With all of ^^ in mind, re-using the perf protocol becomes impossible.
>>
>> https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/k4lpzxtrq3x6riyv6etxiobn7nbpczf2bp3m4oc752nhjknlit@uo53kbppzim7/
>> https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20241115003809epcms1p518df149458f3023d33ec6d87a315e8f6@epcms1p5/
>>
> 
> It is good to capture summary of these old discussions if they are relevant.

Ack

Thanks,
Pragnesh

> 
>> We'll add more call flow diagrams as part of the documentation for the next
>> re-spin to make reviews a bit more easier.
>>
> 
> Anything that improves and helps in understanding this is always welcome.
>