Re: [PATCH 1/2] mfd: arizona: Add GPIO maintain state flag

[Charles Keepax]

On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 02:48:45PM +0200, Linus Walleij wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 2:21 PM, Richard Fitzgerald
> <rf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 14:14 +0200, Linus Walleij wrote:
> >> On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 11:15 AM, Charles Keepax
> >> <ckeepax@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> > On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 10:34:27AM +0100, Richard Fitzgerald wrote:
> >>
> >> >> 3) The codec only has to be kept awake while any such GPIO is actually
> >> >> in use. See (2)
> >> >
> >> > Yeah option 3 is the primary issue here, we only want to keep the
> >> > CODEC enabled whilst specific GPIOs are in use. As GPIOs can be
> >> > dynamically requested/released by things in the kernel we want to
> >> > know which GPIOs require the CODEC to be kept alive. Also in the
> >> > future one might be tempted to add maintain whilst high and
> >> > maintain whilst low options for lines with pulls on them to
> >> > further optimise power.
> >>
> >> Why does this have to be encoded as information in the device
> >> tree? Isn't it better to use a static table in the driver?
> >>
> >> I don't see what use system integrators and others playing
> >> around with the device tree has of this, it will just be confusing
> >> to them if it is a chip-internal detail.
> >>
> >
> > They are GPIOs for connecting to external hardware, we don't know what
> > people are going to connect them to so they have to tell us how they
> > need them to behave.
> 
> Aha it is a consumer configuration thing, then I see it.
> 
> I think it seems a bit odd that it is assumed that the default is that
> we should *not* preserve the GPIO output value if we go to sleep.
> Should the flag be inverted?
> 

I agree that is a bit odd, my thinking was keeping the behaviour
the same for existing systems. But it only introduces a power
regression perhaps it is ok to require people to update their DT
to avoid that?

> Also, why can't we just use a generic flag for this, it seems very
> very generic.
> 
> Look in:
> include/dt-bindings/gpio/gpio.h
> 
> Is there any reasons why we can't have:
> /* Bit 3 express GPIO suspend/resume persistance in low power mode */
> #define GPIO_MUST_KEEP_VALUE 0
> #define GPIO_MAY_LOOSE_VALUE_DURING_SLEEP 8
> 
> Yeah it's talkative but informative. This way you can mark up lines
> that are OK to loose their value during low-power/sleep using
> just (new) standard bindings that can be reused by others,
> also optionally making it possible for the gpiolib core to take action
> on these properties if need be.
> 

I certainly have no objections to making this a core feature if
you are comfortable with that. I will have a look at what that
would look like.

Thanks,
Charles