Re: [RFC 4/4] ARM: shmobile: r8a7790: adapt DTS for I2C slave support

Wolfram Sang
2014-09-12T09:58:08Z

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> ok, take our embedded controller driver (in staging/nvec) as an example. It's
> basicly an MFD connecting keyboard, mouse, power, gpio, and some other stuff
> to the soc. The MFD operates in master mode while the SOC is the I2C slave.
> Theoretically, these roles could also switch (but that's not defined in the
> nvec protocol).

I see these cases currently:

1) my current case

The I2C slave is not needed for board bringup, mainly for development or
playing around. It can have this or that functionality on this or that
address. -> does not belong into DT, should be done in userspace

2) Slave mode is needed for board bringup

Some other components need a specific I2C slave to be present before
userspace is available, otherwise the system is unusable. This is IMO
then a hardware description and justifies DT entries:

DT pseudocode:

i2c {
compatible = "nvidia, tegra-i2c";

ec-slave@42 {
compatible = "nvidia, ax100-ec-slave";
reg = <0x42>;
};
};

Of course, an MFD driver providing "nvidia, ax100-ec-slave" is needed
which uses the I2C slave mode of the tegra controller.

3) Master + slave mode is needed for board bringup:

Again, IMO a hardware description, so we could use:

i2c {
compatible = "nvidia, tegra-i2c";

ec@64 {
compatible = "nvidia, ax100-ec";
reg = <0x64>;
};
};

This is a standard I2C device driver (using the MFD framework) where
i2c-tegra would act as a master on the client for 0x64. However, its
probe function can fill an i2c_board_device (the driver should know the
slave device address because of the protocol), get a new client using
i2c_new_device, and register that as a I2C slave client. It then has an
address where it listens and an address where it can send to. When to do
what is protocol implementation.

Am I missing something? Board properties can be encoded within the
compatible entries ("ax100-ec", "ax200-ec"...). I'd think this means
mostly different protocols, though.

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