Re: [PATCH 08/11] MTD: m25p80: Add option to limit SPI transfer size.

Michal Suchanek
2015-07-21T08:15:04Z

Hello,

On 21 July 2015 at 06:29, Vinod Koul <vinod.koul@intel.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 09:01:34PM +0200, Michal Suchanek wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> On 15 July 2015 at 17:59, Brian Norris <computersforpeace@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi Michal,
>> >
>> > On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 01:52:27PM +0200, Marek Vasut wrote:
>> >> The problem is, if you add a new DT binding, you'd have to support it
>> >> forever, no matter how bad idea that binding turned out to be.
>> >
>> > Agreed, and a solid NAK to this patch. I could have sworn I gave such a
>> > response when this was originally being discussed a month ago.
>> >
>> > AFAICT, you have one of two general approaches available to you:
>> >
>> > 1. Fix up the SPI driver so that it knows how to break large SPI
>> > transfers up into smaller segments that its constituent hardware (DMA
>> > controllers, fast clocks, etc.) can handle.
>> >
>> > 2. Utilize/create a parameter within the SPI subsystem to communicate
>> > that the SPI master has a limited max transfer size (notably: NOT a
>> > per-device DT property, but a SPI API property), and modify SPI device
>> > drivers (like m25p80) to honor it. Mark Brown seemed open to this, and I
>> > thought he suggested it somewhere.
>>
>> It is not known what exactly is limited here.
>>
>> It seems that the pl330 fails but it is not possible to transfer that
>> much data over the spi bus in one go without the help of the pl330.
>>
>> With either approach the limit depends on the SPI transfer settings
>> which are known the the SPI driver. The pl330 driver is oblivious to
>> these because it just transfers data from one port to another port and
>> has no idea that the port is wired to SPI in the SoC.
>>
>> On the other hand, AFAICT the SPI driver only allocates a DMA channel
>> which it receives through DT binding and is oblivious to the fact the
>> DMA channel lives on a pl330. It could probably determine that the
>> channel is indeed driven by a pl330. I don't think it's a great idea
>> to add device-specific handling to a generic dmaengine driver or a
>> dmaengine-spiecific handling to a SPI driver.
>>
>> It's technically possible to pass SPI transfer parameters to the
>> dmaengine driver prior to transfer and the dmaengine could impose some
>> limitation based on those parameters. However, generalising this to
>> drivers other than SPI might be problematic. Should this interface
>> also handle i2c parameters, VE parameters, audio parameters, ethernet
>> parameters, etc?
> Or alternatively we could publish the limitations of the channel using
> capabilities so SPI knows I have a dmaengine channel and it can transfer max N
> length transfers so would be able to break rather than guessing it or coding
> in DT. Yes it may come from DT but that should be dmaengine driver rather
> than client driver :)
>
> This can be done by dma_get_slave_caps(chan, &caps)
>
> And we add max_length as one more parameter to existing set
>
> Also all this could be handled in generic SPI-dmaengine layer so that
> individual drivers don't have to code it in
>
> Let me know if this idea is okay, I can push the dmaengine bits...
>

It would be ok if there was a fixed limit. However, the limit depends
on SPI slave settings. Presumably for other buses using the dmaengine
the limit would depend on the bus or slave settings as well. I do not
see a sane way of passing this all the way to the dmaengine driver.

Thanks

Michal