Re: [PATCH v8 1/5] PM / Runtime: Add getter for querying the IRQ safe option

From: Vinod Koul
Date: Wed Nov 05 2014 - 09:05:40 EST


On Mon, Nov 03, 2014 at 05:04:08PM +0000, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 03, 2014 at 09:57:28PM +0530, Vinod Koul wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 01, 2014 at 02:29:42AM +0200, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > > Many other drivers suffer from the same problem. While I won't reject your
> > > proposed fix, I would prefer a more generic approach.
> > >
> > > One option that has been discussed previously was to use a work queue to delay
> > > starting the DMA transfer to an interruptible context where
> > > pm_runtime_get_sync() could be called. However, as Russell pointed out [1],
> > > even that won't work in all cases as the DMA slave might need the transfer to
> > > be started before enabling part of its hardware (OMAP audio seem to be such a
> > > case).
> > >
> > > I've heard a rumor of a possible DMA engine rework to forbid calling the
> > > descriptor preparation API from atomic context. This could be used as a base
> > > to implement runtime PM, as DMA slave drivers should not prepare descriptors
> > > if they don't need to use them. However that's a long term plan, and we need a
> > > solution sooner than that.
> >
> > Well it is not a rumour :)
> >
> > I have been contemplating that now that async_tx will be killed so we dont
> > have to worry about that usage. For the slave dma usage, we can change the
> > prepare API to be non atomic. I think the users will be okay with approach.
> > This way drivers can use runtime pm calls in prepare.
>
> Except we /do/ have a fair number of places where the prep calls are made
> from atomic contexts, particularly in serial drivers. You'd need to
> introduce a tasklet into almost every serial driver which doesn't
> already have one to restart RX DMA after an error or pause. Eg,
>
> drivers/tty/serial/amba-pl011.c
> drivers/tty/serial/pch_uart.c
> drivers/tty/serial/imx.c
>
> Probably also:
>
> drivers/net/ethernet/micrel/ks8842.c
>
> There could well be other places as well, I've not gone through and
> checked exhaustively.
Yes that would be required to be done first. Or is there any better
alternative proposal, am all ears

--
~Vinod
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/