Re: Allowing reset controllers before SMP initialization (on ARM)?

[Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>]

On Wednesday 15 April 2015 17:51:18 Florian Fainelli wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In order to support initialization of the secondary core on BCM63138
> SoCs, I would want to utilize a reset controller to release the
> secondary CPU from reset [1].
> 
> Here are multiple options:
> 
> - expose a custom function which registers the reset controller platform
> driver as early as possible, which is probably acceptable, but also
> requires the DT machine descriptor to populate the platform bus earlier,
> which we could completely avoid

I think populating the platform bus earlier is not realistic, that
would break lots of existing dependencies. In particular, we can't
do it much earlier because it has to be done after the platform bus
itself is instantiated.

> - have a OF_DECLARE_RESET_CONTROLLER() which is running fairly early
> during boot, such that we can utilize reset controllers are early as
> possible,  before any initcall level, and before SMP initialization is
> kicking in

We've added a couple of those, and it could be done here, but putting
them in the right order is a bit tricky, and I think we can avoid it.

> - since the code that boots secondary CPUs is relatively unique, even
> within the scope of the reset controllers (sequence involves touching
> multiple registers), pulling it outside of the reset controller might be
> acceptable (there is still some level of sharing though for low-level
> indirect read/write operations)

Yes, it's a hack, but the SMP code is rather special and a lot of
other platforms do similar hacks already. What I'd like to see
happen in the long run is more along the lines of:

- Avoid dependencies on the early SMP code, and just set up the
  data structures for possible CPUs early, which can be done without
  any hardware interaction. Then move the actual CPU enable path
  much later in the boot process, possibly combined with the cpuidle
  driver.

	Arnd