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From: peter@hurleysoftware•com (Peter Hurley)
To: linux-arm-kernel@lists•infradead.org
Subject: [PATCH 2/4] of: DT quirks infrastructure
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2015 13:09:58 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <54E77876.9020500@hurleysoftware.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20150220164753.GC22752@roeck-us.net>

Hi Guenter,

On 02/20/2015 11:47 AM, Guenter Roeck wrote:

[...]

> I am open to hearing your suggestions for our use case, where the CPU card with
> the eeprom is manufactured separately from its carier cards.

I think your use case may be more compelling than two flavors of Beaglebone
(one of which is pretty much a dead stick), but it's also less clear what your
design constraints are (not that I really want to know, 'cause I don't).

But the logical extension of this is an N-way dtb that supports unrelated SOCs,
and I think most would agree that's not an acceptable outcome.

My thought was that every design that can afford an EEPROM to probe can afford
a bootloader to select the appropriate dtb, and can afford the extra space
required for multiple dtbs.

I'm not naysaying; I just want to elicit enough information so the community
can make informed decisions.

> I assume you might suggest that manufacturing should (re-)program the EEPROM
> on the CPU card after it was inserted into the carrier.
> 
> Problem is though that the CPU card may be inserted into ts carrier outside
> manufacturing, at the final stages of assembly or in product repair. Those
> groups would typically not even have the means to (re-)program the eeprom.
> Besides, manufacturing would, quite understandably, go ballistic if we demand
> that they start programming EEPROMs after insertion into carrier, and no longer
> use pre-programmed EEPROMs.

I agree; that would be The Wrong Way.

> Note that it is not feasible to put the necessary EEPROM onto the carrier
> either. Maybe in a later design. Maybe that makes sense, and we will go along
> that route at some point. However, forcing a specific hardware solution
> due to software limitations, ie lack of ability by core software to handle
> the different carries, seems to be not the right decision to make on an
> OS level.

Agreed; hardware is what it is.


> In the PCI world it has long since been accepted that the world is not perfect.  
> The argument here is pretty much equivalent to demanding that PCI drop its
> quirks mechanism, to force the HW manufacturers to finally get it right from
> the beginning. I somehow suspect that this won't happen.

I was thinking back to the introductions of fast DEVSEL# and AGP :(

> Instead of questioning the need for a mechanism such as the one proposed by
> Pantelis, I think our time would be better spent arguing if it is the right
> mechanism and, if not, how it can be improved.

My thoughts exactly. Apologies if something I wrote came across as
"You Shall Not Pass" :)

One issue seems to be the moving target that is the compelling use case(s).
The initial submission implied it was the Beaglebone, which comes with
4GB eMMC/microSD so naturally the argument for space-savings with DTBs doesn't
fly. That has since been clarified so no need to rehash that.

Regards,
Peter Hurley

  reply	other threads:[~2015-02-20 18:09 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 54+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-02-18 14:59 [PATCH 0/4] Device Tree Quirks & the Beaglebone Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-18 14:59 ` [PATCH 1/4] arm: of: Add a DT quirk method after unflattening Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-18 14:59 ` [PATCH 2/4] of: DT quirks infrastructure Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-18 15:41   ` Mark Rutland
2015-02-18 15:53     ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-18 16:32       ` Ludovic Desroches
2015-02-18 16:39         ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-18 16:47           ` Ludovic Desroches
2015-02-18 16:46       ` Matt Porter
2015-02-18 17:31       ` Mark Rutland
2015-02-18 19:32         ` Guenter Roeck
2015-02-19 14:29         ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-19 16:48           ` Frank Rowand
2015-02-19 17:00             ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-19 17:30               ` Frank Rowand
2015-02-19 17:38                 ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-19 18:01                   ` Maxime Bizon
2015-02-19 18:12                     ` Sylvain Rochet
2015-02-19 18:22                       ` Maxime Bizon
2015-02-20 14:21                   ` Peter Hurley
2015-02-20 14:35                     ` Ludovic Desroches
2015-02-20 15:00                       ` Peter Hurley
2015-02-20 15:02                         ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-20 15:24                           ` Peter Hurley
2015-02-20 15:38                             ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-20 16:34                               ` Peter Hurley
2015-02-20 16:49                                 ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-20 17:30                       ` Rob Herring
2015-02-20 17:37                         ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-23  7:00                         ` Ludovic Desroches
2015-02-20 14:38                     ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-20 16:47                     ` Guenter Roeck
2015-02-20 18:09                       ` Peter Hurley [this message]
2015-02-20 18:48                         ` Guenter Roeck
2015-02-23  7:30                           ` Ludovic Desroches
2015-02-20  8:04                 ` Ludovic Desroches
2015-02-19  2:08   ` Frank Rowand
2015-02-19 14:41     ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-19 16:40       ` Frank Rowand
2015-02-19 16:51         ` Frank Rowand
2015-02-20 13:23       ` Peter Hurley
2015-02-19 18:01     ` Rob Herring
2015-02-19 18:12       ` Guenter Roeck
2015-02-20  8:16       ` Ludovic Desroches
2015-02-18 14:59 ` [PATCH 3/4] arm: am33xx: DT quirks for am33xx based beaglebone variants Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-19 18:16   ` Tony Lindgren
2015-02-19 18:28     ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-19 18:36       ` Tony Lindgren
2015-02-19 18:44         ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-23 18:39           ` Peter Hurley
2015-02-23 18:48             ` Pantelis Antoniou
2015-02-19 18:57         ` Guenter Roeck
2015-02-20 16:13       ` Jon Hunter
2015-02-18 14:59 ` [PATCH 4/4] arm: dts: Common Black/White Beaglebone DTS using quirks Pantelis Antoniou

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