Re: [RFC 0/9] PCI: introduce the concept of power sequencing of PCIe devices

[Kalle Valo <kvalo@kernel.org>]

Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com> writes:

> Hello,
>
> On 1/4/2024 5:01 AM, Bartosz Golaszewski wrote:
>> From: Bartosz Golaszewski <bartosz.golaszewski@linaro.org>
>> During last year's Linux Plumbers we had several discussions
>> centered
>> around the need to power-on PCI devices before they can be detected on
>> the bus.
>> The consensus during the conference was that we need to introduce a
>> class of "PCI slot drivers" that would handle the power-sequencing.
>> After some additional brain-storming with Manivannan and the
>> realization
>> that the DT maintainers won't like adding any "fake" nodes not
>> representing actual devices, we decided to reuse the existing
>> infrastructure provided by the PCIe port drivers.
>> The general idea is to instantiate platform devices for child nodes
>> of
>> the PCIe port DT node. For those nodes for which a power-sequencing
>> driver exists, we bind it and let it probe. The driver then triggers a
>> rescan of the PCI bus with the aim of detecting the now powered-on
>> device. The device will consume the same DT node as the platform,
>> power-sequencing device. We use device links to make the latter become
>> the parent of the former.
>> The main advantage of this approach is not modifying the existing DT
>> in
>> any way and especially not adding any "fake" platform devices.
>
> There is prior work in that area which was applied, but eventually reverted:
>
> https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-pci/msg119136.html
>
> and finally re-applied albeit in a different shape:
>
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220716222454.29914-1-jim2101024@gmail.com/
>
> so we might want to think about how to have pcie-brcmstb.c converted
> over your proposed approach. AFAIR there is also pcie-rockchip.c which
> has some rudimentary support for voltage regulators of PCIe
> end-points.
>
> What does not yet appear in this RFC is support for suspend/resume,
> especially for power states where both the RC and the EP might be
> losing power. There also needs to be some thoughts given to wake-up
> enabled PCIe devices like Wi-Fi which might need to remain powered on
> to service Wake-on-WLAN frames if nothing else.

Good point, suspend and resume is very important for ath11k and ath12k.
And although I'm not expecting any issues with hibernation please also
consider that. Currently ath11k hibernation is broken because of MHI and
it has been pain trying to fix that. So best to make sure these cases
work from the beginning.

> I sense a potential for a lot of custom power sequencing drivers being
> added and ultimately leading to the decision to create a "generic" one
> which is entirely driven by Device Tree properties...
>
> Thanks for doing this!

A big thank you from me too! It's great to finally see this solved so
that ath11k and ath12k can be used in wider range of devices.

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