Re: [PATCH v5 04/21] dt-bindings: Add doc for the Ingenic TCU drivers

[Daniel Lezcano]

On 31/07/2018 00:01, Paul Cercueil wrote:

[ ... ]

>>> Â+- ingenic,timer-channel: Specifies the TCU channel that should be
>>> used as
>>> Â+Â system timer. If not provided, the TCU channel 0 is used for the
>>> system timer.
>>> Â+
>>> Â+- ingenic,clocksource-channel: Specifies the TCU channel that
>>> should be used
>>> Â+Â as clocksource and sched_clock. It must be a different channel
>>> than the one
>>> Â+Â used as system timer. If not provided, neither a clocksource nor a
>>> Â+Â sched_clock is instantiated.
>>
>> clocksource and sched_clock are Linux specific and don't belong in DT.
>> You should define properties of the hardware or use existing properties
>> like interrupts or clocks to figure out which channel to use. For
>> example, if some channels don't have an interrupt, then use them for
>> clocksource and not a clockevent. Or you could have timers that run in
>> low-power modes or not. If all the channels are identical, then it
>> shouldn't matter which ones the OS picks.

It can't work in this case because the pmw and the timer driver are not
communicating and the first one can stole a channel to the last one.


> We already talked about that. All the TCU channels can be used for PWM.
> The problem is I cannot know from the driver's scope which channels will
> be free and which channels will be requested for PWM. You suggested that I
> parse the devicetree for clients, and I did that in the V3/V4 patchset. But
> it only works for clients requesting through devicetree, not from platform
> code or even sysfs.
> 
> One thing I can try is to dynamically change the channels the system timer
> and clocksource are using when the current ones are requested for PWM. But
> that sounds hardcore...

Yes, it is :/

Sorry for letting you wasting time and effort to write an overkill code
not suitable for upstream.

A very gross thought, wouldn't be possible to "register" a channel from
the timer driver code in a shared data area (but well self-encapsulated)
and the pwm code will check such channel isn't in use ?

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