Re: [PATCH 2/8 v4] Documentation: bindings: dma: Add binding for dma-channel-mask

John Stultz
2019-01-17T17:44:10Z

On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 9:08 AM Manivannan Sadhasivam
<manivannan.sadhasivam@linaro.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jan 16, 2019 at 09:10:23AM -0800, John Stultz wrote:
> > Some dma channels can be reserved for secure mode or other
> > hardware on the SoC, so provide a binding for a bitmask
> > listing the available channels for the kernel to use.
> >
> > This follows the pre-existing bcm,dma-channel-mask binding.
> >
> > Cc: Vinod Koul <vkoul@kernel.org>
> > Cc: Rob Herring <robh+dt@kernel.org>
> > Cc: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>
> > Cc: Tanglei Han <hantanglei@huawei.com>
> > Cc: Zhuangluan Su <suzhuangluan@hisilicon.com>
> > Cc: Ryan Grachek <ryan@edited.us>
> > Cc: Manivannan Sadhasivam <manivannan.sadhasivam@linaro.org>
> > Cc: dmaengine@vger.kernel.org
> > Cc: devicetree@vger.kernel.org
> > Signed-off-by: John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org>
> > ---
> > v3: Renamed to hisi-dma-avail-chan
> > v4: Reworked to generic dma-channel-mask
> > ---
> > Documentation/devicetree/bindings/dma/dma.txt | 4 ++++
> > 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)
> >
> > diff --git a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/dma/dma.txt b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/dma/dma.txt
> > index 6312fb0..eeb4e4d 100644
> > --- a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/dma/dma.txt
> > +++ b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/dma/dma.txt
> > @@ -16,6 +16,9 @@ Optional properties:
> > - dma-channels: Number of DMA channels supported by the controller.
> > - dma-requests: Number of DMA request signals supported by the
> > controller.
> > +- dma-channel-mask: Bitmask of available DMA channels in ascending order
> > + that are not reserved by firmware and are available to
> > + the kernel. i.e. first channel corresponds to LSB.
>
> A general assumption is, "dma-channel-mask" refers to the bit fields of
> the channels which needs to be masked. But here, it refers to the channels
> which are available. Doesn't it contradict?

Hrm. So while I can sort of understand the common usage of "mask" as
to "hide", thus the desire to have a bitfield mean "the channels we
hide" or "don't use", but in my experience bitmasking is more commonly
used to keep only a portion of the the bits, so from that perspective
its more intuitive that a mask be the channels we keep to use. So I'm
not sure if your suggestion makes it more clear.

But I'm not very particular here, so I'll defer to others on this.

thanks
-john