Re: [PATCH 08/11] MTD: m25p80: Add option to limit SPI transfer size.

[Marek Vasut]

On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 02:18:09 PM, Michal Suchanek wrote:
> On 30 July 2015 at 13:24, Marek Vasut <marex@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Monday, July 27, 2015 at 10:43:05 PM, Michal Suchanek wrote:
> >> On 27 July 2015 at 19:43, Marek Vasut <marex@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> > On Monday, July 27, 2015 at 11:46:25 AM, Michal Suchanek wrote:
> >> >> On 24 July 2015 at 10:34, Marek Vasut <marex@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> >> > On Thursday, July 23, 2015 at 07:03:47 PM, Michal Suchanek wrote:
> >> >> Ok, so here is some summary.
> >> >> 
> >> >> I have a NOR flash attached to a s3c64xx SPI controller with 64byte
> >> >> fifo and a pl330 dma controller.
> >> >> 
> >> >> Normally DMA controller is used for transfers that do not fit into
> >> >> the FIFO.
> >> >> 
> >> >> I tried adding the flash memory ID to the spi-nor driver table and
> >> >> adding a DT node for it.
> >> >> 
> >> >> The flash is rated at 120MHz so I used that speed but the ID was
> >> >> bit-shifted and identification failed. There is DT property
> >> >> samsung,spi-feedback-delay for addressing this and at 120MHz it must
> >> >> be 2 or 3 on this board. 40MHz works with default value 0.
> >> >> 
> >> >> The next step after identification worked was to try reading the
> >> >> flash content. For this the DMA controller is used because data is
> >> >> transferred in blocks larger than 64 bytes. When reading the whole
> >> >> 4MB flash the transfer failed silently. I got a 4MB file of all ones
> >> >> or all zeroes.
> >> >> 
> >> >> It turns out that
> >> >> 
> >> >>  - the pl330 locks up when transfering large amount of data.
> >> >> 
> >> >> Specifically, the maximum power of 2 sized transfer at 120MHz is 128
> >> >> bytes and 64k at 40MHz. Transferring more than this results in the
> >> >> pl330 locking up and never signalling completion of the transfer.
> >> > 
> >> > Hypothesis:
> >> > I think this might just be that the controller didn't catch all the
> >> > inbound clock ticks and thus counted less inbound data than it was
> >> > set up to receive. The controller thus waits for more data.
> >> 
> >> The flash chip can transfer data as long as you keep the clock going,
> >> especially when you transfer 64k off a 4M flash.
> >> 
> >> The read command is bound just by stopping the clock. There is always
> >> more data to be had.
> > 
> > Sure, if you keep clocking the chip, the data will keep going. Is the
> > chip being clocked ?
> 
> There is always data. Like in whenever you want to read SPI data you
> sample the input pin and watever you sample is data so far as SPI bus
> is concerned.

Aren't you forgetting that the data are synchronous to the clock which you
(your SPI block) generate ?

> > Doesn't the PL330 have some kind of a counter register where you can
> > check how much data were received so far ? That should be sufficient to
> > verify this hypothesis of mine.
> 
> Could check that, yes. Maybe I could read the counter in a function
> which dmaengine client uses to tear down the dma transfer.

Might be a good idea. Check if the register is stuck for too long and
then zap the transfer.

> On a related note I enabled more prints on the spidev test program.
> 
> I have code that tests maximum transfer size up to the 4k spidev limit
> and it can transfer full 4k buffer of NOPs at 80MHz.
> 
> The recieved data is all ones except a 00 at the start. So it looks
> like read-only transfers fail but full-duplex sort of work. And it
> reproduces the 00 prefix that was seen in the dma-only setup in
> otherwise working setup :-S
> 
> An attempt to read a page of data using the fast-read command fails
> with timeout.

It would be a good idea to detail what your program exactly does on
the bus (like, "my program sends 3 bytes of data 0xf0 0x0b 0xar and
then receives 60 bytes of data").  Maybe I'm lost, but your test is
really not clear.

> >> >> Data
> >> >> is left in FIFO which causes subsequent commands to fail since
> >> >> garbage is returned instead of command reply. Also subsequent read
> >> >> may cause I/O error or or return an empty page depending on the
> >> >> garbage around.
> >> > 
> >> > So the driver for the DMA controller might need to be augmented to
> >> > handle this case -- add a timeout and in case DMA times out, drain
> >> > the FIFO to make sure subsequent transfers do not fail.
> >> 
> >> There is no way to add timeout in the DMA driver since it does not
> >> know the SPI clock.
> >> 
> >> The timeout is handled by the SPI driver and it should be possible to
> >> augment it to drain the FIFO when DMA fails so long as FIFO level is
> >> readable somewhere.
> > 
> > If the DMA doesn't complete in certain amount of time, it should time out
> > I'd say. Don't you think ?
> 
> No. The DMA  driver has no idea if the transfer is at 133MHz, 40MHz,
> 1MHz, 1kHz, whatever.

That's not really important, is it ? If the transfer doesn't finish in, say,
1 second, and it is a 4096b transfer, then it is most likely timeout.

> On the other hand, adding a flush_fifo in the SPI driver after DMA
> failure allows probing the chip reliably by realoding the driver even
> just after a failed transfer.

OK

> >> >> - the I/O errors are not checked in spi-nor at all which leads to
> >> >> silent data corruption.
> >> >> 
> >> >> On a suggestion that this may improve reliability I changed the
> >> >> s3c64xx driver to use DMA for all transfers. This caused
> >> >> identification to fail in spin-nor because the ID was prefixed with
> >> >> extra 00  byte. Testing with spidev confirmed that everything is
> >> >> prefixed with extra 00.
> >> > 
> >> > The determinism of this is in fact excellent news.
> >> > 
> >> >> Also when the DMA controller locked up no
> >> >> transfers were possible anymore. When DMA was not used for sending
> >> >> commands the controller would recover on next command. I made the
> >> >> option to always use DMA configurable and it turns out that the
> >> >> returned data is prefixed with 00 only when no transfer without DMA
> >> >> was ever made. Loading the spi-nor driver with the dma-only option
> >> >> off and then with dma-only option on results in correct operation.
> >> >> Only loading the dma-only driver first causes the 00 prefix.
> >> > 
> >> > Can we conclude that the PIO codepath somehow programs a register
> >> > somewhere which gets rid of this 0x00 prefix ? If so, this should then
> >> > also be part of the DMA codepath, or even better, this should be set
> >> > in probe() somewhere.
> >> 
> >> Yes, it looks like it.
> > 
> > Did you find what this could be please ?
> 
> The suspicious function is enable_datapath in the s3c64xx driver.
> There is even a comment about keeping the clock going on half-duplex
> transfers.
> 
> I did not get to dissecting it so far.

Good luck!
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