Re: [PATCH] mtd: nand: stm_nand_bch: add new driver

From: pekon
Date: Tue Aug 05 2014 - 17:13:29 EST


Hello,

On Tuesday 05 August 2014 07:53 PM, Lee Jones wrote:
On Thu, 03 Jul 2014, Gupta, Pekon wrote:
From: Brian Norris [mailto:computersforpeace@xxxxxxxxx]
On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 10:20:05AM +0100, Lee Jones wrote:
[...]
+static void bch_wait_seq(struct nandi_controller *nandi)
+{
+ int ret;
+
+ ret = wait_for_completion_timeout(&nandi->seq_completed, HZ/2);

Are you sure you want to use same timeout value for all operations
like ERASE, READ, WRITE ? because
(1) There is wide variance between:
- BLOCK_ERASE: max(tBER) = 10ms) for MT29F4G08 Micron NAND
- PAGE_ERASE: max(tPROG) = 600usec for same Micron part.

(2) The value of HZ varies across kernel versions and hardware platforms.

I suggest you pass the timeout value in call to bch_wait_seq().
And this timeout value should be like 2x of typical value of which you found
during ONFI parsing, or from DT

How do you obtain these timings? I don't see tBER or tPROG being used
anywhere in MTD.


These are not from NAND framework, these are terms used in data-sheet.
However, you can read all signal timing from ONFI page while probing.
But, as Brian suggested that timeout is a erroneous and rare condition
anyway, so these relaxed timeout values are acceptable. So you may
ignore my previous comment.


[...]

+{
+ uint8_t *b = data;
+ int zeros = 0;
+ int i;
+
+ for (i = 0; i < page_size; i++) {
+ zeros += hweight8(~*b++);
Are you sure you want to use hweight8 ?
hweight32 or something should give better performance, plz check.
because this piece of code (check_xx_bitflips) sometimes becomes
bottle neck for READ path.

I'm not sure, no. If I change it, how will I know if it's still doing
the correct thing or otherwise?

hweight/hweight16/hweight32 are all macros of same family
just operating on different data-widths, so you may continue
for now. But once the driver is merged, you might like to
re-analyze performance gain (especially on MLC NAND) when
using hweight32() instead of hweight8().


[...]

+ /* Load last page of block */
+ offs = (loff_t)block << chip->phys_erase_shift;
+ offs += mtd->erasesize - mtd->writesize;
+ if (bch_read_page(nandi, offs, buf) < 0) {

*Important*: You shouldn't call internal functions directly here..
Instead use chip->_read() OR mtd-read() that will:
- keep this code independent of ECC modes added in your driver in future.
- implicitly handle updating mtd->ecc_stat (like ecc_failed, bits_corrected).
- implicitly take care of address alignments checks and offset calculations.

<Same applies to other places where you have directly used bch_read_page())

Yourself and Brian seem to disagree on this point. Which is correct?

+ /* Is block already considered bad? (will also catch invalid offsets) */
+ ret = mtd_block_isbad(mtd, offs);

You're violating some of the layering here; the low-level driver
probably shouldn't be calling the high-level mtd_*() APIs. On a similar
note, I'm not 100% confident that the nand_base/nand_bbt separation is
written cleanly enough for easy maintenance of your nand_base + ST BBT
code in parallel. I might need a second look at that, and I think
modularizing your BBT code to a separate file could help ease this a
little.

... here is the converse argument.

I think somewhere in earlier comments, Brian also supported
to use high-level function like mtd_read(). Also, nand_bbt.c
itself uses 'mtd_read(), mtd_read_oob() and mtd_write_oob()
at many places. So I'll let Brain decide here.
But having low-level function will add redundant code for
re-checking and aligning the addresses boundaries to block
and page/sector sizes.

Brian ??


with regards, pekon


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