Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] mtd: rawnand: cadence: support deferred prob when DMA is not ready

[Miquel Raynal <miquel.raynal@bootlin.com>]

Hello,

>> > Driver works without external DMA interface i.e. has_dma=0.
>> > However current driver does not have a mechanism to configure it from
>> > device tree.
>> 
>> What? Why are you requesting a DMA channel from a dmaengine in this case?
>> 
>> Please make the distinction between the OS implementation (the driver) and
>> the DT binding which describe the HW and only the HW.
>> 
>
> Let me clarify from bindings(hw) and driver prospective. 
>
> Bindings :-
> Cadence NAND controller HW has MMIO registers, so called slave DMA interface
> for page programming or page read. 
>         reg = <0x10b80000 0x10000>,
>               <0x10840000 0x10000>;
>         reg-names = "reg", "sdma"; // sdma =  Slave DMA data port register set
>
> It appears that dt bindings has captured sdma interface correctly.

Slave DMA is very confusing because in Linux we make the distinction
between:
1- external DMA (generic DMA controller) driven
   through the dmaengine API, through which we interact using the so
   called slave API
2- peripheral DMA (DMA controller embedded in the NAND IP) when there is
   no "external/generic" engine. In this case we control DMA transfers
   using the registers of the NAND controller (or a nearby range, in
   this case), the same driver handles both the NAND and the DMA part.

You used the wording Slave DMA (#1), but it feels like you are talking
about the other (#2). Can you please confirm in which case we are?

> Linux Driver:-
> Driver can read these sdma registers directly or it can use the DMA.
> Existing driver code has hardcoded has_dma with an assumption that
> an external DMA is always used and relies on DMA API for data
> transfer.

I am sorry but DMA API does not mean much. There are 3 APIs:
- dma-mapping, for the buffers and the coherency
- dmaengine, used in case #1 only, to drive the external DMA controllers
- dma-buf to share buffers between areas in the kernel (out of scope)

> Thant is why it requires to use DMA channel from dmaengine.

If I understand it right, no :-)

Either you have an external DMA controller (#2) or an internal one (#1)
but in this second case there is no DMA channel request nor any
engine-related API. Of course you need to use the dma-mapping API for
the buffers.

> In my previous reply, I tried to describe this driver scenario but maybe I mixed up. 
> has_dma=0, i.e. accessing sdma register without using dmaengine is
> also working.

But do you have an external DMA engine in the end? Or is it specific to
the NAND controller?

> However, currently there is no option in driver to choose between using dmaengine and
> direct register access.
>

Thanks,
Miquèl