Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 01/13] mfd: Add i.MX generic mix support

From: Lee Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2020 07:27:27 +0100

On Thu, 23 Apr 2020, Aisheng Dong wrote:

> > From: Abel Vesa <[email-masked]>
> > Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2020 5:19 PM
> > On 20-04-17 09:07:47, Lee Jones wrote:
> > > On Wed, 15 Apr 2020, Abel Vesa wrote:
> > >
> > > > Some of the i.MX SoCs have a IP for interfacing the dedicated IPs
> > > > with clocks, resets and interrupts, plus some other specific control registers.
> > > > To allow the functionality to be split between drivers, this MFD
> > > > driver is added that has only two purposes: register the devices and
> > > > map the entire register addresses. Everything else is left to the
> > > > dedicated drivers that will bind to the registered devices.
> > > >
> > > > Signed-off-by: Abel Vesa <[email-masked]>
> > > > ---
> > > >  drivers/mfd/Kconfig   | 11 +++++++++++
> > > >  drivers/mfd/Makefile  |  1 +
> > > >  drivers/mfd/imx-mix.c | 48
> > > > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> > > >  3 files changed, 60 insertions(+)
> > > >  create mode 100644 drivers/mfd/imx-mix.c
> > >
> > > For completeness - Arnd's reply to this patch:
> > >
> > 
> > I'm replying here to Arnd's reply.
> > 
> > I'm trying to give here a whole picture of the entire problem while the
> > documentation for i.MX8MP is _not yet_ public.
> > 
> > Historically, each IP would have its own enclosure for all the related GPRs.
> > Starting with i.MX8MP some GPRs (and some subparts) from the IP were placed
> > inside these mixes.
> > 
> > Audiomix for example, has multiple SAIs, a PLL, and some reset bits for EARC
> > and some GPRs for AudioDSP. This means that i.MX8MP has 7 SAIs, 1 EARC and
> > 1 AudioDSP.
> > Future platforms might have different numbers of SAIs, EARCs or AudioDSPs.
> > The PLL can't be placed in one of those SAIs and it was placed in audiomix.
> > The i.MX8MP has at least 4 of these mixes.
> > 
> > Now, the commonalities between all mixes are:
> >  - have their own power domains
> >  - driven by dedicated clock slice
> >  - contain clocks and resets
> >  - some very subsystem specific GPRs
> > 
> > Knowing that each mix has its own power domain, AFAICT, it needs to be
> > registered as a single device. Considering that it can have clocks (audiomix has
> > gates, muxes and plls), I believe that needs a clock driver, even more so since the
> > muxes need their parents from the platform clock driver. Same principle applies
> > to reset bits. The subsystem specific GPRs can be registered as syscon devices
> > and taken care of by its counterpart IP (e.g. the AudioDSP specific regs would be
> > taken care of by the DSP driver, if there is one).
> > 
> > Now based on all of the above, by using MFD we take care of the power domain
> > control for the entire mix, plus, the MFD doesn't have any kind of functionality
> > by its own, relying on its children devices that are populated based on what is in
> > the mix MFD devicetree node.
> > 
> 
> How about doing like this which maybe can address Arnd's concerns?
> audiomix: audiomix@30e20000 {
>         compatible = "fsl,imx8mp-audiomix", "syscon";
>         reg = <0x30e20000 xxx>,
>               <0x30e20xxx xxx>;
>         reg-names = "audio", "reset", "...";
>         #clock-cells = <1>;
>         #reset-cells = <1>;
>         power-domains = <&audiomix_pd>;
> }
> 
> That means we have one combo driver registering two controllers (clk/reset), both use
> the same power domain as audiomix.
> And it can be easily extended to support more services provided by audiomix over syscon
> if needed.
> Then the 'dummy' MDF driver is not needed anymore.
> 
> Jones & Arnd,
> How do you think?

Sounds okay in principle.  Anything that prevents the existence of a
dummy (a.k.a. pointless) MFD must be seen as a positive move.

-- 
Lee Jones [李琼斯]
Linaro Services Technical Lead
Linaro.org │ Open source software for ARM SoCs
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