Re: [PATCH] tty/8250_early: Prevent rounding error in uartclk to baud ratio

[Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.cz>]

On 09/29/2012 08:40 AM, Vineet Gupta wrote:
> On Friday 28 September 2012 06:32 PM, Jiri Slaby wrote:
>> On 09/28/2012 02:19 PM, Alexey Brodkin wrote:
>>> Modify divisor to select the nearest baud rate divider rather than the
>>> lowest. It minimizes baud rate errors especially on low UART clock
>>> frequencies.
>>>
>>> For example, if uartclk is 33000000 and baud is 115200 the ratio is
>>> about 17.9 The current code selects 17 (5% error) but should select 18
>>> (0.5% error).
>>>
>>> On the same lines as following:
>>> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.9-rc3/2.6.9-rc3-mm2/broken-out/serial-pick-nearest-baud-rate-divider.patch
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Alexey Brodkin <abrodkin@synopsys.com>
>>> ---
>>>  drivers/tty/serial/8250_early.c |    2 +-
>>>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>>
>>> diff --git a/drivers/tty/serial/8250_early.c b/drivers/tty/serial/8250_early.c
>>> index eaafb98..cfc46b7 100644
>>> --- a/drivers/tty/serial/8250_early.c
>>> +++ b/drivers/tty/serial/8250_early.c
>>> @@ -140,7 +140,7 @@ static void __init init_port(struct early_serial8250_device *device)
>>>  	serial_out(port, UART_FCR, 0);		/* no fifo */
>>>  	serial_out(port, UART_MCR, 0x3);	/* DTR + RTS */
>>>  
>>> -	divisor = port->uartclk / (16 * device->baud);
>>> +	divisor = (port->uartclk + (8 * device->baud)) / (16 *	device->baud);
>> So this should be in fact DIV_ROUND_CLOSEST(), right?
>>
>> But anyway I'm missing any explanation of *why* this is needed? This
>> should be part of the commit log. Is there any bug you are fixing here?
> 
> Actually the issue showed up when using the stock 8250 driver for
> Synopsys DW UART. This was on a FPGA with ~50MHz clk. When we enabled
> early serial, we saw garbage which Alexey narrowed down to the rounding
> error. So the bug had been latent and it only showed up with such low
> clk rates.

Yes, this is a perfect argument I was asking for and should have been a
part of the commit...

thanks,
-- 
js
suse labs