Re: [PATCH v1 0/6] PolarFire SoC Auto Update Support

Conor Dooley
2023-02-27T22:17:05Z

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Hey Russ,

On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 02:04:36PM -0800, Russ Weight wrote:
> On 2/24/23 00:28, Conor Dooley wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 03:57:09PM +0800, Xu Yilun wrote:
> >> On 2023-02-17 at 16:40:17 +0000, Conor Dooley wrote:
> >>> This patchset adds support for the "Auto Update" feature on PolarFire
> >>> SoC that allows for writing an FPGA bistream to the SPI flash connected
> >>> to the system controller.
> >> I haven't fully checked the patches yet, just some quick comments:
> >>
> >> Since this feature is just to R/W the flash, and would not affect the
> >> runtime FPGA region, I don't think an FPGA manager is actually needed.
> >> Why not just use the MTD uAPI? There is a set of exsiting MTD uAPI &
> >> MTD tool if I remember correctly.
> > A lack of interest in opening up the system controller to userspace!
> > You're right in that the writing of the image can be done that way, and
> > while I was testing I used the userspace bits of mtd along the way - but
> > for validating that the image we are writing we rely on the system
> > controller.
> > I'm really not interested in exposing the system controller's
> > functionality, especially the bitstream manipulation parts, to userspace
> > due to the risk of input validation bugs, so at least that side of
> > things should remain in the kernel.
> > I suppose I could implement something custom in drivers/soc that does
> > the validation only, and push the rest out to userspace. Just seemed
> > fitting to do the whole lot in drivers/fpga.

> In case you haven't already looked at the new firmware-upload
> support in the firmware-loader, I'll give you some references
> here to see if it fit you needs. This would only support the
> write (not the read) but it would allow the controller to do
> validation on the write.
>
> The is the cover letter which shows a usage example:
> https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20220421212204.36052-1-russell.h.weight@intel.com/
>
> And this is a pointer to the latest documentation for it:
> https://docs.kernel.org/driver-api/firmware/fw_upload.html
>
> The only current user is: drivers/fpga/intel-m10-bmc-sec-update.c

Sounds interesting, I shall go and take a look. Just quickly, when you
say it wouldn't support the read, what exactly do you mean?
The only read that I am really interested in doing is reading the first
1K of flash as I need to RMW it, but I don't think that that's what you
mean.
Do you mean that I would not be able to dump the firmware using your
fw_upload interface? If so, that's an acceptable constraint IMO.

Your interface also circumvents us (Microchip) defining yet another
method for interacting with the FPGA, since from my nosing around,
everyone seems to do something different.

Cheers,
Conor.

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