Re: [PATCH v6 2/3] spi: sun4i: Fix clock calculations to be predictable and never exceed the requested rate

Marcus Weseloh
2015-12-28T16:22:41Z

Hi again,

2015-12-28 0:29 GMT+01:00 Marcus Weseloh <mweseloh42@gmail.com>:
> 2015-12-27 22:09 GMT+01:00 Maxime Ripard <maxime.ripard@free-electrons.com>:
[...]
> [...]
>>> - /* Ensure that we have a parent clock fast enough */
>>> + /*
>>> + * Ensure that the parent clock is set to twice the max speed
>>> + * of the spi device (possibly rounded up by the clk driver)
>>> + */
>>> mclk_rate = clk_get_rate(sspi->mclk);
>>> - if (mclk_rate < (2 * tfr->speed_hz)) {
>>> - clk_set_rate(sspi->mclk, 2 * tfr->speed_hz);
>>> + if (spi->max_speed_hz != sspi->cur_max_speed ||
>>> + mclk_rate != sspi->cur_mclk) {
>>
>> Do you need to cache the values? As far as I'm aware, you end up doing
>> the computation all the time anyway.
>
> By caching the values we optimize the case when a single SPI slave
> device (or even multiple slave devices with the same max_speed) are
> used multiple times in a row. In that case, we're saving two calls:
> clk_set_rate and clk_get_rate. I was unsure about how expensive the
> clk_* calls were, so I thought it would be safer use caching. But
> maybe it's not worth the extra code?
>
> Oh, and I just noticed a mistake in the comment: the clock driver
> rounds up _or_ down, so I should drop the "up".

As I'm looking further into this, I think the comment should read
"possibly rounded down", as the clk framework is expected to set a
frequency that is less or equal to the requested frequency. So the
effect I was seeing (that I got a frequency higher than the requested
one) is actually a bug!? Further details below.

> [...]
>>> - div = mclk_rate / (2 * tfr->speed_hz);
>>> - if (div <= (SUN4I_CLK_CTL_CDR2_MASK + 1)) {
>>> - if (div > 0)
>>> - div--;
>>> -
>>> + div = DIV_ROUND_UP(mclk_rate, 2 * tfr->speed_hz) - 1;
>>
>> Isn't it exactly the same thing as mclk_rate / (2 * tfr->speed_hz) ?
>
> It is quite often, but not in all cases. The plain division rounds to
> the nearest integer, so it rounds down sometimes. Consider the
> following case: we have a slow SPI device with a spi-max-frequency of
> 50kHz. Our clock driver can't find a clock as slow as 100kHz, so it
> sets mclk to 214,285Hz.

That clk_set_rate sets a higher frequency than requested seems to be a
problem in itself. I had a look at clk/sunxi/clk-mod0.c and noticed a
few small problems there. Will post an RFC patch in a couple of
minutes.

That doesn't invalidate any of the fixes proposed in this patch,
though. They are still needed, as I see it. But after fixing
clk-mod0.c, we need to make further changes to the spi-sun4i clock
selection, as clk_set_rate could now return -EINVAL. Will amend this
patch as well after receiving feedback on the (soon to come) mod0 clk
patch.

Cheers,

Marcus