Re: [PATCH V2 3/6] stm class: provision for statically assigned masterIDs

[Mathieu Poirier]

On 8 February 2016 at 06:26, Alexander Shishkin
<alexander.shishkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Mathieu Poirier <mathieu.poirier@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> On 5 February 2016 at 05:52, Alexander Shishkin
>> <alexander.shishkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> Chunyan Zhang <zhang.chunyan@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>>>
>>>> From: Mathieu Poirier <mathieu.poirier@xxxxxxxxxx>
>>>>
>>>> Some architecture like ARM assign masterIDs statically at the HW design
>>>> phase, making masterID manipulation in the generic STM core irrelevant.
>>>>
>>>> This patch adds a new 'mstatic' flag to struct stm_data that tells the
>>>> core that this specific STM device doesn't need explicit masterID
>>>> management.
>>>
>>> So why do we need this patch? If your STM only has master 42 allocated
>>> for software sources, simply set sw_start = 42, sw_end = 42 and you're
>>> good to go, software will have exactly one channel to choose from. See
>>> also the comment from <linux/stm.h>:
>>
>> On ARM each source, i.e entity capable of accessing STM channels, has
>> a different master ID set in HW.  We can't assume the IDs are
>> contiguous and from a SW point of view there is no way to probe the
>> values.
>
> Ok, it's the 'static' word that got me confused. From Mike's explanation
> it seems to me that it's the antithesis of static; the master ID
> assignment is so dynamic that it's not controllable by the software and
> may or may not reflect core id, power state, phase of the moon, etc.

Mike did write "master IDs are hardwired to individual cores and core
security states", which make assignment for one platform very static.
On the flip side those will change from one system to another.

>
>>>> In the core sw_start/end of masterID are set to '1',
>>>> i.e there is only one masterID to deal with.
>>>
>>> This is also a completely arbitrary and unnecessary requirement. Again,
>>> you can set both to 42 and it will still work.
>>
>> True - any value will do. The important thing to remember is that on
>> ARM, there is only one masterID channel (from an STM core point of
>> view).  But we could also proceed differently, see below for more
>> details.
>
> Well, we have the masters attribute with two numbers in it that define
> the range of master IDs that the software can choose from. More
> specifically to this situation:
>
>  * the number of channel ID spaces available to the SW is
>    $end - $start + 1, that is, in your case, just 1;
>  * the number of master IDs for the SW to choose from is $end - $start;
>  * if $end==$start, their actual numeric value doesn't really matter,
>    either for the policy definition or for the actual writers.
>
> This $end==$start situation itself may be ambiguous and can be
> interpreted either as having just one *static* master ID fixed for all
> SW writers (what I assumed from your commit message) or as having a
> floating master ID, which changes of its own accord and is not
> controllable by software.

Some clarification here.

On ARM from a SW point of view $end == $start and that doesn't change
(with regards to masterIDs) .  The ambiguity comes from the fact that
on other platforms where masterID configuration does change and is
important, the condition $end == $start could also be valid.

>From configFS, how do we tell users when masterIDs are set in HW?
That's what I wanted to highlight with the '-1'.  Regardless of the
solution we choose I think it is important that we inform, at the very
least, users when masterIDs don't matter.  We could also leave thing
as is, kill this patch and document things thoroughly.  With the
former things are obvious.

>
> These two situations are really the same thing from the perspective of
> the system under tracing. Also, both of these situations should already
> work if the driver sets both sw_start and sw_end to the same
> value.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Alex