Re: [PATCH v3 1/3] x86: baytrail/cherrytrail: Rework and move P-Unit PMIC bus semaphore code

Alan Cox
2018-10-12T17:09:11Z

> > It should be.
>
> You mean that the problem should be purely academic, IOW that registers touched
> by the P-Unit are never touched through ACPI Opregions / power-resources?

As far as I am aware. Holding the lock over both is definitely better
regardless

> >> 2) To safely access the shared I2C bus, we need to do 3 things:
> >> a) Notify the GPU driver that we are starting a window in which it may not
> >> access the P-Unit, since the P-Unit seems to ignore the semaphore for
> >> explicit power-level requests made by the GPU driver
> >
> > That's not what happens. It's more a problem of
> >
> > We take the SEM
> > The GPU driver pokes the GPU
> > The GPU decides it wants to change the power situation
> > The GPU asks
> > It blocks on the SEM
> >
> > and the system deadlocks.
>
> That may be, but why does it deadlock?

As I understand it because the CPU is stuck waiting for the GPU which is
waiting for the SEM which the CPU is holding. This isn't purely software
remember.

> I can understand that you are reluctant to change this code, but this
> commit is not changing the logic, it mostly just moves the code around
> and I do believe that overall doing this is worthwhile.

Fair enough

Alan