Re: Sony IMX290/462 image sensors I2C xfer peculiarity

Alexander Stein
2023-10-11T12:00:07Z

Hi,

Am Mittwoch, 11. Oktober 2023, 13:25:55 CEST schrieb Krzysztof Hałasa:
> Stefan,
>
> > I cannot answer whether the delay is needed for atomic transfer or not.
> > But I can give a bit of context for I2C atomic transfers in general.
> >
> > These where only introduced for a very narrow and special uses shutting
> > down the device/power with external PMICs in the kernel's shutdown
> > handlers.
>
> Well, I guess I'm abusing this code a bit.
>
> The problem is I use Sony IMX290 and IMX462 image sensors, and they have
> an apparently hard-coded timeout of about 2^18 their master clock cycles
> (= ca. 7 ms with my setup). After the timeout they simply disconnect
> from the I2C bus. Of course, this isn't mentioned in the docs.
> Unfortunately, "normal" I2C accesses take frequently more than those
> 7 ms (mostly due to scheduling when all CPU cores are in use). So I
> hacked the IMX I2C driver a bit and now all accesses to the sensor use
> the atomic paths and local_irq_save() (inside the driver only).

I assume that the master clock is running independently to I2C from the SoC
the sensor is attached to. Your calculations indicate you are assuming ~400kHz
I2C clock frequency.
But nothing is preventing that sensor from running on a 100kHz I2C bus. Even
this "atomic" hack will not be sufficient in that case.

Best regards,
Alexander

> > My understand is that an ordinary I2C device would just use normal (and
> > sleepable) I2C transfers while the device is in use.
>
> You are spot-on here :-) Now I use IMX 290 and 462.
>
> OTOH I wonder if such issues are limited to those sensors only.
>
> Thanks for your immediate response,

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