Re: [PATCH 00/14] staging: vc04_services: bcm2835-isp support

Stefan Wahren
2022-12-03T13:41:38Z

Hi Dave,

Am 02.12.22 um 14:42 schrieb Dave Stevenson:
> Hi Stefan
>
> On Fri, 2 Dec 2022 at 12:41, Stefan Wahren <stefan.wahren@i2se.com> wrote:
>> Hi Dave,
>>
>> Am 02.12.22 um 12:23 schrieb Dave Stevenson:
>>> Hi Laurent, Umang, and Stefan.
>>>
>>> On Fri, 2 Dec 2022 at 09:17, Laurent Pinchart
>>> <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi Umang,
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Dec 02, 2022 at 11:57:18AM +0800, Umang Jain wrote:
>>>>> On 12/2/22 6:45 AM, Stefan Wahren wrote:
>>>>>> Am 30.11.22 um 11:58 schrieb Umang Jain:
>>>>>>> On 11/27/22 6:56 AM, Stefan Wahren wrote:
>>>>>>>> Am 26.11.22 um 17:26 schrieb Umang Jain:
>>>>>>>>> On 11/26/22 8:12 PM, Stefan Wahren wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> Am 21.11.22 um 22:47 schrieb Umang Jain:
>>>>>>>>>>> This series aims to upport bcm2835-isp from the RPi kernel [1] and is a
>>>>>>>>>>> independent subset of earlier series [2] posted to upport CSI-2/CCP2
>>>>>>>>>>> receiver IP core("Unicam) + the ISP driver found in BCM283x and compatible
>>>>>>>>>>> SoCs (namely BCM2711). Unicam is still under active development to work
>>>>>>>>>>> with multistream support to get into mainline. Hence only the ISP driver
>>>>>>>>>>> will remain the primary area of this series.
>>>>>>>>>> thanks for working on this. But honestly i would prefer that vchiq
>>>>>>>>>> comes out of staging before adding more features. As Greg said
>>>>>>>>>> some time ago staging is not a place to "dump code and run away".
>>>>>>>>>> These new files are in the same bad shape as the rest of vc04
>>>>>>>>>> before the clean-up here in staging started.
>>>>>>>>> Certainly, I am not here to do that - but I am still learning the ropes.
>>>>>>>> no problem.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> If the staging issue is becoming a blocker for bcm2835-isp going
>>>>>>>>> upstream, I would be happy to help here! Though I must mention that
>>>>>>>>> I still have limited visibility so my aim would be to chart out a
>>>>>>>>> plan of things needed to be done to get vc04_services out of staging!
>>>>>>>> The vchiq driver is in staging since 2016, so every step forwards is
>>>>>>>> good. Unfortunately all of the low hanging fruits has been gathered.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> For me the most important, but not to tricky steps to get vchiq out
>>>>>>>> of staging would be:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> * Cleanup logging mechanism
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> * Get rid of custom function return values
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> There was already an attempt for this [1]
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> * Get rid of all non essential global structures and create a proper per
>>>>>>>> device structure
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I agree that VCSM is on the TODO list for vchiq, but this driver
>>>>>>>>>> is not necessary for making bcm2835-audio & bcm2835-camera leave
>>>>>>>>>> staging. It just binds more resources on a new feature.
>>>>>>> bcm2835-camera is the legacy camera stack which probably need to be
>>>>>>> dropped from hereon...
>>>>>> I don't not know if there any users left, so i would be careful here.
>>>>>> Can bcm2835-isp completely replace bcm2835-camera? Sorry, for this
>>>>>> dumb question but i'm not expert here.
>>>>> I am careful too here and probably need Input from RaspberryPi in order
>>>>> to proceed to drop it. But from my perspective - bcm2835-camera is _not_
>>>>> going out of staging - it'll either sit here (or probably dropped) as
>>>>> statied from [1]
>>>>>
>>>>> ```
>>>>> + * There are two camera drivers in the kernel for BCM283x - this one
>>>>> + * and bcm2835-camera (currently in staging).
>>>>> ```
>>>>>
>>>>> The bcm2835-camera is meant to be replaced by unicam [1] , but the ISP
>>>>> (bcm2835-isp) is meant to be worked with unicam [1]. In fact, I have
>>>>> mentioned in my cover the testing of bcm2835-isp happened on top of
>>>>> unicam patches.
>>>> To be accurate, the bcm2835-camera driver supports the VC4
>>>> firmware-based camera stack. In that setup, the camera sensors (OV5647
>>>> or IMX219), CSI-2 receiver (Unicam) and ISP are all controlled by the
>>>> firmware, which provides a high-level interface towards the kernel. This
>>>> architecture has been replaced by Linux-side control of the camera
>>>> sensors (through existing drivers in drivers/media/i2c/), Unicam
>>>> (through the driver from [1]) and ISP (through this driver). Moving
>>>> control to the Linux side requires complex processing in userspace,
>>>> handled by libcamera.
>>>>
>>>> bcm2835-camera is thus replaced by multiple drivers combined with
>>>> libcamera, and that is the camera stack that is shipped by Raspberry Pi
>>>> these days. While this may affect some userspace use cases), we will not
>>>> work on destaging bcm2835-camera, and as far as I'm aware, nobody else
>>>> is planning to do so either. I don't mind much if the driver stays in
>>>> staging for some more time, but I'd rather drop it if possible.
>> Thanks for clarification. Okay, so Unicam + bcm2835-isp are able to
>> handle the old camera (OV5647)?
> There are kernel drivers in mainline for ov5647 (v1) and imx219 (v2)
> cameras, with imx477 (HQ camera) due to be done. Connected to
> bcm2835-unicam that gives you raw images from these sensors.
>
> However you have to use libcamera to get useful images with these
> drivers - raw Bayer isn't easy to consume.
> Libcamera has support for all three (and more) sensors in the RPi IPA
> (image processing algorithms), and will make use of bcm2835-isp to
> process the images appropriately.
>
>>> It would be reasonable to drop it at the point that Libcamera can work
>>> to a similar level with at least the following list of applications:
>>> - FFmpeg
>>> - Gstreamer
>>> - Chromium
>>> - Firefox
>>> - Motion
>>> And that still leaves a huge number of existing V4L2 apps out in the cold.
>>>
>>> Do you wish to make any predictions as to when that would be
>>> achievable? Or even when a v1.0 release of libcamera is going to
>>> happen?
>>> Dropping anything prior to those points would be rather premature in my book.
>>>
>>>
>>> The TODOs on bcm2835-camera are:
>>> 1) Zero copy. That comes almost for free as bcm2835-isp already does
>>> this, but it does rely on vcsm-cma.
>>> The main reason I haven't pushed it is that it then requires
>>> reasonable amounts of CMA heap for all the buffers, which until
>>> recently haven't been present in the default configurations. With the
>>> vc4 DRM driver now being default (at least for the vendor kernel) and
>>> also requiring CMA, making the change makes more sense.
>>> AFAIK there is no easy way to have one driver choosing between using
>>> vb2_vmalloc_memops and vb2_dma_contig_memops at runtime, but I may be
>>> wrong.
>>> Actually bcm2835_defconfig appears to only allocate a 32MB CMA heap,
>>> so perhaps we don't get very far.
>> CMA configuration should actually happen in device tree or kernel
>> cmdline. The bcm2835_defconfig is limited to make it work even with the
>> original Pi.
> It's the original 256MB Pis that are the issue as memory is so tight.
> Losing a bigger chunk to CMA is a problem there.
>
> I see that bcm283x.dtsi sets it to 64MB, which is probably sufficient
> for most bcm2835-camera use cases, but leaves me worried that you'll
> steal it from other things.
>
>>> 2) This isn't workable within the current V4L2 frameworks. The
>>> multi-planar V4L2 pixel formats are currently allocated as independent
>>> buffers for each plane, whereas the firmware needs a single buffer
>>> with (currently) specific offsets for the chroma planes. The
>>> V4L2/videobuf2 core changes required to implement that are going to be
>>> significant, and have minimal gain.
>>> The specific stride handling is already dealt with (set bytesperline
>>> appropriately), it's the padding of the height to a multiple of 16
>>> before the chroma planes on YUV420 and NV12 formats that require the
>>> firmware to do a small amount of repacking. The performance hit is
>>> actually minimal anyway.
>>>
>>> If bcm2835-camera is the only thing holding back vc04_services, then I
>>> can have a look at it.
>> No, it's the vchiq interface which needs the work.
> OK, I'll liaise with Umang and may look to deal with a couple of them.
> Things like documenting the memory barriers probably falls to Phil.

actually this item is already done. I missed to update the TODO file and
send a patch soon.

Best regards

>
> Dave
>
>> Thanks Stefan
>>
>>> Dave
>>>
>>>>> [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-media/20220208155027.891055-5-jeanmichel.hautbois@ideasonboard.com/
>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I see two TODO files in vc04_services:
>>>>>>>>> ./bcm2835-camera/TODO
>>>>>>>>> ./interface/TODO
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> One of the bcm2835-camera TODO points to the vc-sm-cma driver
>>>>>>>>> itself. So that's address in the series. The other remaining one -
>>>>>>>>> I will need to take a deeper look before commenting on it.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The main chunk of TODO are in vc04_services/interfaces/TODO. Doing
>>>>>>>>> a cursory reading of them suggests that these apply to *all*
>>>>>>>>> vc04_services components? Am I right?
>>>>>>>> Actually these applies just for the interfaces directory. Some of
>>>>>>>> them could apply to the services, but this is no priority.
>>>>>>> By no priority, you mean this doesn't affect the criteria required to
>>>>>>> ful-fill to get these out of staging?
>>>>>> Correct
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Are these are the specific bits of cleanup you are referring to in
>>>>>>>>> your comment?
>>>>>>>> You mean about bcm2835-isp? There were too many changes to vchiq
>>>>>>>> that i don't remember them all. The first that come to my mind was
>>>>>>>> those fancy comment sections which is not kernel coding style. It
>>>>>>>> has been removed.
>>>>>>> No, I don't mean the bcm2835-isp changes (those are upcoming /
>>>>>>> out-of-tree still so...). I mean what are the specific bits / points
>>>>>>> that needs to be addressed to get vc04_services out of the staging.
>>>>>> These were the points which i mentioned in my last email. They came
>>>>>> from interface/TODO.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> You have mentioned it above now, so I'll follow up on those.
>>>>>> That would be great :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The many vchiq changes you referred to above comment (that you don't
>>>>>>> remember) are from [1] as well or some other series ?
>>>>>> Sorry, for the confusing. The many changes i refer were the dozens of
>>>>>> clean up patches for vc04_interfaces in mainline staging since the
>>>>>> last years. [1] was just a single patch which has been accepted yet.
>>>>> Ah I see. There are many others that I've to dig out then. Thanks for
>>>>> clarifying!
>>>>>
>>>>>>>> [1] -
>>>>>>>> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-staging/20220712181928.17547-1-jslebodn@redhat.com/
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Unfortuntately i hadn't much time to work on vchiq by myself.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Just my two cents
>>>>>>>>>> Stefan
>>>> --
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Laurent Pinchart
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