Re: [PATCH v7 4/6] pci: Introduce a domain number for pci_host_bridge.

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Friday 11 April 2014 10:22:25 Liviu Dudau wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 09:46:36PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > On Thursday 10 April 2014 15:53:04 Liviu Dudau wrote:
> > > So Arnd seems to agree with me: we should try to get out of architecture specific
> > > pci_sys_data and link the host bridge driver straight into the PCI core. The
> > > core then can call into arch code via pcibios_*() functions.
> > > 
> > > Arnd, am I reading correctly into what you are saying?
> > 
> > Half of it ;-)
> > 
> > I think it would be better to not have an architecture specific data
> > structure, just like it would be better not to have architecture specific
> > pcibios_* functions that get called by the PCI core. Note that the
> > architecture specific functions are the ones that rely on the architecture
> > specific data structures as well. If they only use the common fields,
> > it should also be possible to share the code.
> 
> While I've come to like the pcibios_*() interface (and yes, it could be
> formalised and abstracted into a pci_xxxx_ops structure) I don't like the fact
> that those functions use architectural data in order to function. I know it
> might sound strange, as they *are* supposed to be implemented by the arches,
> but in my mind the link between generic code and arch code for PCI should be
> done by the host bridge driver. That's how PCI spec describes it, and I see no
> reason why we should not be able to adopt the same view.

Yes, that's a good goal for the architectures that need the complexity.
I would also like to have a way to change as little as possible for
the architectures that don't care about this because they only have
one possible host controller implementation, which isn't necessarily
a conflict.

> To be more precise, what I would like to happen in the case of some functions
> would be for the PCI core code to call a pci_host_bridge_ops method which
> in turn will call the arch specific code if it needs to. Why I think that would
> be better? Because otherwise you put in the architectural side code to cope
> with a certain host bridge, then another host bridge comes in and you add
> more architectural code, but then when you port host bridge X to arch B you
> discover that you need to add code there as well for X. And it all ends up in
> the mess we currently have where the drivers in drivers/pci/host are not capable
> of being ported to a different architecture because they rely on infrastructure
> only present in arm32 that is not properly documented.

Right. Now it was intentional that we started putting the host drivers
into drivers/pci/host before cleaning it all up. We just had to start
somewhere.

> > I also don't realistically think we can get there on a lot of architectures
> > any time soon. Note that most architectures only have one PCI host
> > implementation, so the architecture structure is the same as the host
> > driver structure anyway.
> > 
> > For architectures like powerpc and arm that have people actively working
> > on them, we have a chance to clean up that code in the way we want it
> > (if we can agree on the direction), but it's still not trivial to do.
> > 
> > Speaking of arm32 in particular, I think we will end up with a split
> > approach: modern platforms (multiplatform, possibly all DT based) using
> > PCI core infrastructure directly and no architecture specific PCI
> > code on the one side, and a variation of today's code for the legacy
> > platforms on the other.
> 
> Actually, if we could come up with a compromise for the pci_fixup_*() functions
> (are they still used by functional hardware?)  then I think we could convert
> most of the arm32 arch code to re-direct the calls to the infrastructure code.

The fixups are used by hardware that we want to keep supporting, but I don't
see a problem there. None of them rely on the architecture specific PCI
implementation, and we could easily move the fixup code into a separate
file. Also, I suspect they are all used only on platforms that won't be
using CONFIG_ARCH_MULTIPLATFORM.

> But yes, there might be a lot of resistance to change due to lack of resources
> when changing old platforms.

Well, it should be trivial to just create a pci_host_bridge_ops structure
containing the currently global functions, and use that for everything
registered through pci_common_init_dev(). We definitely have to support
this method for things like iop/ixp/pxa/sa1100/footbridge, especially those
that have their own concept of PCI domains.

For the more modern multiplatform stuff that uses DT for probing and
has a driver in drivers/pci/host, we should be able to use completely
distinct pci_host_bridge_ops structure that can be shared with arm64.

	Arnd
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